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A UTHOR : 


MALLOCK,  WILLIAM 


TITLE: 


THE  LIMITS  OF  PURE 
DEMOCRACY 


PLACE: 


NEW  YORK 


DA  TE : 


1917 


/^ 


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[L^;.  Mallock,  Wcilliam^  Hcurrell3   1849-1923 1,.^^  jM 

U:     '  t*^'The  limits  of  pure  democracy  ...       New  Yorl 


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THE  LIMITS  OF   PURE  DEMOCRACY 


li 


THE  LIMITS  OF  PURE 
DEMOCRACY 


BY 


W.  H.  MALLOCK 


<( 


AUTHOR    OF 
RELIGION    AS    A    CREDIBLE    DOCTRINE,"  "  THE    RECONSTRUCTION   OF 
BELIEF,"   "a    human    DOCUMENT," 
ETC.,    ETC. 


NEW   YORK 
E.   P.   DUTTON  &   COMPANY 


nr> 


Gift  of  the  PresiiJen^ 


r> 


PREFACE 

wi"':,r.  r.r,s  r„r  o^Tr  "''''- 

the  lit  iwlve  „o„.t    VC"     T"  t"^'*"''  '''""8 

namely,  .he  n^ra'd  ihe'LT.S'u,'!"'  """'.'""- 
democracy-has  ,e„„i,L  j   ""™  "'  ">=  Power  of  pure 

impor.anc'^.    LTlu  „tc.  ^''"'  '  ■"°''  '"""'"i* 

of  a  leisured  clas«j     th^  ^       ui    ^^'^^^^^  ^^^  functions 

industrial  ficuut  'b^  edu^^^'^th  "^"^  ."'  •^^'*^''^ 
the  probably  increasfng  dTff' re^^^^^^^^^^^  -^ 

and  the  lowest  on  the  othJr  7k       ''^*'^^^°  **>«  highest 

on  tHe  other,  the  increasing  pressure  of 

V 


VI 


PREFACE 


the  world-population  against  the  means  of  subsistence, 
and  the  increasing  importance  of  mere  mental  efficiencies 
in  combating  this  pressure,  etc.  The  publication  of 
these  discussions  (growing  as  they  do  out  of  the 
questions  here  dealt  with)  is  deferred. 

The  author  desires  to  record  his  obligations  to  the 
singularly  interesting  work  on  oligarchy  in  revolutionary 
parties,  by  Professor  Michels  of  Basle,  which  was  pub- 
lished in  England  in  the  year  1915  (see  Book  I,  Chap. 
I);  to  Mr.  Stewart  Graham's  account,  published  some 
years  ago  by  Mr.  Murray,  of  the  socialist  experiment  in 
Paraguay  known  as  New  Australia  (see  Book  IV,  Chap. 
Ill);  and  also  to  The  Daily  Mail,  for  the  letters  pub- 
lished by  it  from  a  socialist  correspondent  in  Russia. 

Further,  the  author  regrets  that  it  has  been  impossible 
to  include  any  reference  to  certain  articles  on  "Indus- 
trial Revolution  or  Ferment,"  which  were  published  in 
The  Times  in  October,  1917,  and  attracted  wide  atten- 
tion. The  whole  of  the  present  work  was  by  that  time 
in  the  printer's  hands. 

November  y  1917. 


CONTENTS 


BOOK   I 

POLITICAL  DEMOCRACY 


CHAPTER  I 

THK   CONCEPTION   OF  A   GENERAL   WILL   IN   POLITICS 

The  violation  of  thought  by  the  use  of  inaccurate 
language,  as  exemplified  by  Rousseau's  fantastic  concep- 
tion of  freedom  (1-4) .  Its  analogue  in  current  conceptions 
of  democracy  (4).  Modern  definitions  of  political  de- 
mocracy analysed  (4-6).  Pure  democracy  as  government 
by  the  spontaneous  and  identical  wills  of  the  units  of  the 
average  mass  (6-10).  Except,  as  to  certain  questions,  no 
spontaneous  identity  of  average  wills  exists.  Classifica- 
tion of  political  questions  with  regard  to  which  a  pure 
democratic  will  is  possible  and  impossible  (10-19). 

CHAPTER   II 

OLIGARCHY   AND   WILL-FORMATION 

A  pure  democratic  will  possible  as  to  very  simple  ques- 
tions, but  as  to  those  only  (20-21).  As  to  the  composite  or 
complex  questions  which  arise  in  great  and  complex  states, 
a  general  will  requires  the  formative  influence  of  the  few 
(21-22).  Examples  from  English  history,  Electoral  re- 
form, Free  Trade,  the  lUght  to  Work,  Scientific  imple- 
ments of  war  (22-25).  The  part  played  by  oligarchy  in  the 
formation  of  general  wills  as  to  such  questions  (25-29). 

CHAPTER  III 

THE    ARTS   OF    OLIGARCHY 

The  devising  of  definite  measures  by  the  few,  which  the 
many  are  induced  to  ratify  (30-31) .  The  methods  by  which, 
in  the  absence  of  bribery,  the  necessary  ratification  is 
obtainable  (31-32).  Concerted  agitation,  advertisement  and 
concerted  exposition.  The  object  of  these  and  the  object 
of  bribery  the  same  (33-35).  The  Referendum  as  an  imple- 
ment of  oligarchy  (35-37). 

Tii 


PAOK 


20 


30 


VIU 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTEE  IV 

INEXPUGNABLE    OLIGARCHY 

Everyman  an  oligarch,  whatever  his  rank,  who  intention- 
ally influences  the  vote  of  any  other  man.  Oligarchs  of  the 
tap-room  (39-40).  Conversation  as  an  implement  of  oli- 
garchy (39-41).  Pure  democracy  would  suppress  the  public 
meetmg  and  all  oratory  (42).  With  regard  to  simple  and 
fundamental  questions,  such  methods,  as  a  fact,  are  not  re- 
sorted to  (42-43).  The  fact  that  they  ar^'  resorted  to,  with 
regard  to  complex  questions,  shows  that  oligarchic  methods 
are  necessary  (4^-45) 

CHAPTER   V 

REVOLUTIONARY  OLIGARCHIES  . 

•  •  •  •  •  » 

Oligarchy  in  Trade  Union  and  Labour  Parties  (46-47). 
These  parties  at  first  purely  democratic,  but  oligarchy  has 
inevitably  developed  in  them  (46-48).  Socialist  and  Trade 
Union  leaders  inevitably  become  oligarchs— that  is  to  say 
more  than  mere  employees  (48-49).  Experience  has  shown 
certain  special  gifts  to  be  necessary  in  these  leaders.  When 
once  in  power,  it  is  difficult  to  dismiss  them  (48-49).  A 
"  gregarious  inertia  "  characteristic  of  the  majority  in  all 
revolutionary  parties,  the  energy  necessary  for  leadership 
being  found  in  small  minorities  only  (50).  The  ambitions 
of  rival  oligarchs  (51).  Causes  which  solidify  the  position 
of  leaders  actually  in  office:  examples  from  Germany  and 
Italy  (51-52).  The  oligarchs  of  "The  International," 
Marx  and  Engels  (53).  Lassalle  and  Proudhon  admit  that 
purely  democratic  wills  must  be  merged  in  those  of  the 
leaders  (5o-56).  Recent  admission  by  socialists  to  the  same 
effect  (o7).  Syndicalist  oligarchs,  such  as  Labriola  (58-59). 
Open  repudiation  of  pure  democracy  by  modern  revolution- 
aries (59-61). 

CHAPTER    VI 

DISAPPEARING    ILLUSIONS 

•••••• 

Means  and  a  general  objective.  Impotence  of  any  purely 
democratic  will  to  prescribe  complex  means  (62-64).  The 
conception  of  a  will  which  is  purely  democratic  as  to  objec- 
tives, though  not  as  to  means  (64-65).  Confusion  in  this 
conception  between  ivUl  and  toish  (66).  A  general  wisii  for 
welfare  through  governmental  action  (66-67).  This  is  totally 
different  from  a  will  as  to  complex  means  (68).  Welfare, 
as  subserved  by  government,  is  a  i)lexus  of  definite  means 
to  a  generally  wished-for  end  (69).  The  average  man  wholly 
incompetent  to  define  this  plexus  of  means  for  himself,  or 


PAU 


38 


46 


62 


CONTENTS 


to  specify  it  in  a  definite  way  to  others  (70).  A  will  which 
does  not  specify  definite  means  is  not  a  political  will  at 
all  (71).  Popular  awakening  from  the  dream  of  pure  demo- 
cracy in  politics  (72-74).  Transference  of  popular  hopes 
from  political  democracy  to  democracy  in  the  spheres  of 
industrial  or  social  life  (75-77). 


IX 


PACK 


BOOK  II 

DEMOCRACY  AND  TECHNICAL  PRODUCTION 

CHAPTEE  I 

THE   DEFINITION   OF   INDUSTRY 78 

The  conception  of  Industrial  Democracy  as  a  means  by 
which  the  masses  will  appropriate  all  incomes  now  derived 
from  mere  ''possession"  (78-79).  This  conception  based 
on  a  loose  idea  of  what  industry  is  (79).  Industry  is  a 
technical  process  affecting  material  substances  (80).  Trade 
Unions  and  Labour  Parties,  as  such,  have  nothing  to  do  with 
the  details  of  this  process  (81).  Industry  is  simply  the 
application  of  hand- work,  knowledge,  and  other  mental 
forces  to  the  fashioning  and  movement  of  material  sub- 
stances which  are  given  to  man  by  Nature  (81-82). 

CHAPTEE  II 

PURE    DEMOCRATIC    INDUSTRY 83 

Pure  democracy  in  industry  means  hand-work  directed 
solely  by  the  knowledge  and  mental  powers  common  to  all 
average  men,  and  excludes  all  authority  or  guidance  exer- 
cised by  the  exceptional  few  (83).  This  doctrine  reduced 
to  a  (luasi-scientific  form  by  Marx  (84-85).  Summary  of 
the  Marxian  doctrine  that  manual  labourers  are  the  sole 
and  equal  producers  of  all  wealth  (85-87).  This  doctrine 
true  of  production  in  its  earlier  stages  (75-88).  But  if  this 
be  the  whole  truth,  how  has  production  ever  increased  in 
efficiency  ?  (88-89).  Attempts  made  by  Marx  to  answer 
this  question  (89-91).  Actual,  but  limited  progress  of 
purely  democratic  hand-work  (91).  The  four  causes  to 
which  this  limited  progress  has  been  due  (92-96).  From 
the  decline  of  Roman  slavery  to  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  the  productivity  per  head  of  industrial  workers 
stationary  (97).  Extraordinary  progress  since  that  time. 
To  what  has  this  progress  been  due  ?  (97-98). 


'Il 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTEK  III 

THE    SECRET   OP   MODERN   PROGRESS 

Inability  of  the  Marxian  doctrine  of  labour  as  the  sole 
producer  to  explain  modern  industrial  progress.  Analysis 
of  the  gaps  and  errors  of  the  Marxian  argument  (99-105) 
Marx  ascribes  progress  largely  to  new  subdivisions  of 
manual  labour  (105-106).  The  main  cause  (which  Marx 
entirely  misses)  is  the  subdivision  of  productive  eff(»rt  into 
manual  and  purely  mental,  so  that  the  two  are  performed 
by  different  classes  (107-108).  This  differentiation  of  the 
mental  workers  from  the  manual  is  essentially  a  develoD- 
ment  of  oligarchy  (10&-109).  ^ 

CHAPTER  IV 

THE   PRODUCTIVITY   OF   THE    FEW 

*  •  •  •  . 

Definite  admissions  by  modern  socialists  on  the  special 
/?^^T.^x  *^?  productivity  of  the  industrial  oligarchy 
^!y^^i!>  Attempts  made  by  socialists  to  reconcile  an 
oligarchic  with  a  purely  democratic  formula.  Five  types  of 
argument  (111).  Three  of  these  entirely  futile  (111-114) 
Two  deserve  consideration.  The  evolutionary  or  monistic 
argument  which  denies  the  reality  of  the  individual.  This 
has  no  relation  to  practical  life  (115-116).  The  argument 
borrowed  from  Mill,  which  represents  all  productive  efforts 
as  equal  if  they  are  "  equally  necessary  "  (117).  Radical 
error  of  this  argument  (118).  The  true  basis  of  all  practical 
reasoning  which  relates  to  production,  and  indeed  to  all 
human  causation  (119-120).     The  exceptional  productivity 

noi  lo.x"^-  T.^'''^  ^^}  "'®"  ''^  practice  really  calculate  this 
(1J1-1J4).  Practical  concession  by  thinkers  of  all  schools 
(socialists  included)  that,  relatively  to  their  number,  the 
n  o!^i  Sr?^  ^.?^  produce  incomparably  more  than  the  many 
(1J4-127).     Why,  then,  having  admitted  this  fact,  should 

devicefum)^^''''"''  *""  ''^^''"''^  '^  ^^  ^^^^  argumentative 

BOOK    III 

DEMOCRATIC  DISTRIBUTION  AS   RELATED 
TO   THE  FACTS  OF  PRODUCTION 

CHAPTER  I 

DISTRIBUTION   IN   ENGLAND 

The  practical  reason  why  socialists  seek  to  obscure  the 
exceptional  productivity  of  the  few,  even  whilst  formally 


PAGE 


99 


110 


CONTENTS 

iyU7  .  six  classes  of  income— Waaea  S«l«r,oo   iT    t      ^    \ 
earnings  Ean.i„gs  of  amaU  bS:  ;«?  SeKrtfro 

earned  and  unearned  infomfof "  profeTionTL'a'n  %  *n 
relative  amount  in  a  country  like  Pnlw  f  ?i,  .^""S" 
unearned  norfinn  cAq  i?m       »      Jingland  of  the  actually 

socialists  (whichTey'it^i-  J^^^Z,)'^^:^^^,  ^^^ 
the  unearned  mcome  of  a  typical  modern  countl^^Ul-mf 

CHAPTEE  II 

COMPABATIVE   DISTBIBUTION 

cou^nWes'ais'mr^n'f  t?''""  ?,"  »"  *«  ^^^  "ode™ 
in  th^  n  -^A^^-  J  J^^ta^'ed  similarities  of  distribution 
In.i™  United  Kmgdom  and  the  United  States  (14^46) 
?"«  m^""l"''?«  ^^T  *°<^  ^5000  in  the  two  countries 
llell^  ■  Th"^''"  g'«/"«tion  of  wages  in  both  countries 
iil   «     -^'i-  r  ?**  graduations  tota  ly  incompatible  with 

ev^denras  to  thl^j'  I'^'l  ^^^^-'^^^-     I^ter-tiral 

mytns  as  to  the   millionaires  and   the  lesser  '*  rich "  of 

( ifcr^'I"''  '"'^  ^  '^l  ^""^^  ^^^^^^  and  Ameri^ 
of  L.   ^'  •  ^PP'T^'nafce,  though  not  perfect,  adjustment 

Tnc^v  dTJs  aa"!^"    wS'T  ^-^h^.  ^actual 'efficincTof 
f^^  (105-156).     Why  does  modern  distribution  con- 

form everywhere  to  the  same  precise  scheme,  and  to  no 

histrj  im-^r  "^  ''"  '""'""  "  ^  '^  '^"^^  ^ 

CHAPTER  III 

A    CENTURY   OF   CHANGING   DISTRIBUTION 

.    The  income  of  England  in  the  years  1801  and  1907     THa 

E  astfa^S.'^^n"-  ^^^^^  ??pf  ^i-  beiwM't^Ise  III 
aates  (158-159).     Directive  Mmd  as  the  primary  producer 


XI 


PAGI 


143 


158 


xii  CONTENTS 


of  the  increment  (159).  Number  of  large  and  small  busi- 
nesses in  England  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  and 
the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  centuries  (159-160).  In- 
creased number  of  employees  subject  to  single  units  of 
direction,  or  the  increasing  radius  of  the  influence  exercised 
by  each  of  the  more  powerful  minds ;  increased  output 
per  worker  thus  resulting  (161).  Of  this  increment,  attribu- 
table primarily  to  Mind,  the  employers  (as  representing 
Mind)  get  no  more  than  a  fifth.  What  becomes  of  the 
remainder  ?  A  large  part  goes  to  a  novel  class  of  sub- 
ordinate mental  workers  (161-167).  The  larger  part  of  the 
increment  goes  to  the  manual  labourers  (168).  Why  should 
this  ^e,  if  labour  itself  is  non-progressive?  (169).  The 
reason  is,  that  industry,  as  intellectualised  by  a  scientific 
oligarchy,  requires,  and  provides  opportunities  for  novel 
grades  of  labour  which,  except  the  lowest,  command  com- 
petitive prices,  which  in  varying  degrees  exceed  the 
minimum  (170-172).     The  three  productive  classes  (173). 


CHAPTER  IV 


DISTRIBUTION   AS   IT    IS 


I 


Summary  of  preceding  chapter.  The  obvious  question 
is,  if  the  Mind  of  the  employers  in  any  sense  produces  the 
whole  increment,  why  do  the  employers  not  appropriate 
the  whole  ?  (174-175).  It  does  produce  the  whole  in  one 
sense,  but  in  another  sense  it  does  not,  as  shown  by  the 
case  of  the  Jesuits  in  Paraguay  (175-177).  If  the  oligarchy 
is  taken  as  a  going  concern,  it  practically  produces  part  of 
the  increment  only.  If  its  existence  is  in  danger,  there 
is  practical  truth  in  saying  that  it  produces  the  whole 
(177-178).  Distribution  as  it  is  coincides  with  the  three 
forces— Supreme  mind.  Subordinate  mind  and  Labour — 
on  condition  that  oligarchic  industry  is  taken  as  a  going 
concern  (178-179).  Even  socialists  are  beginning  to  admit 
that  distribution  as  it  is  conforms  substantially  to  the 
broad  facts  of  distribution  (179-181).  Even  socialists  are 
beginning  to  admit  that  if  accord  between  production  and 
distribution  were  complete,  distribution  would  not  in  any 
vital  way  differ  from  what  it  is  (181-184).  Socialist  theory 
as  revised  in  the  light  of  this  admission  (183-184).  The 
new  theory  is  that  distribution  must  be  determined  by 
moral  sentiment,  not  by  the  facts  of  production.  Incisive 
exposition  of  this  doctrine  by  an  American  socialist 
(184-187). 


hh 


CONTENTS 


Xlll 


PAOl 


BOOK  IV 

DISTRIBUTION  BY   DEMOCRATIC  SENTIMENT 

CHAPTER  I 


174 


THE    SENTIMENTAL    PROGRAMME 

•  •  •  •  . 

An  interesting  and  typical  exposition  of  the  reasoned 

n«£?«Qf  T'*  '™  ""f  .^*"  S'^«°  »>y  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw 
iiflw-^-  ^°?  T' °^  Mr.  Shaw's  Exposition.  Industrial 
collectivism  (which  is  merely  the  American  Trust  system 

(l»y-190).  Collectivism  (as  the  Trust-system  shows^  in- 
volves  inequality  of  effort,  but  socialism^  di^rsfr^m  the 
Trust-system    in    demanding  equality   of    Davment    fW 

(1 JO-191)  If  all  are  to  be  paid  alike  irrespective  of  what 
they  produce,  how  wiU  work  be  secured  from  the  iX? 
Mr  Shaw  answers :  By  quasi-military  discipline  (19lV 
But  most  men,  according  to  him,  will  naturally  w°rk  their 

(l^Qtm^AU^h^V  i'  :'l>-1gP-"o-  to^Tmanity.' 

thoiiAf  ;f " .     •*? S^*'  r^^  •*«  ^y«> « <Jo°e  without 

thought   of  "payment,"   and  thus  in  a   socialist   polity 
though  the  Idle  would  be  whipped  like  slaves,  the  maS 
of  the  citizens  would  perform  industrial  work  with  vo"uT 
F^L  T"'-  »°'i  """W  »»»  require  whipping  (192-194) 
Extraordinary  confusions  of  thought  involved  in  this  conten 
tion  shown  :  firstly,  as  to  the  nature  of  "  work"'  (19^95^ 
secondly,  as  to  the  nature  of  "income"  (195-197)      Othii 

CHAPTEE  II 

SOCIALIST    EXPERIMENTS 

Reluctance  of  socialists  to  test  their  industrial  programme 
by  experiment  (201-202).     A  large  number  of  exnef  St 

lllZV^^fTr"'''^''^'''^-    SevenVpiSS^jJel 
nere  reviewed— Religious  experiments-Their  complete  but 
limited  success  (202-203).     Five  of  the  secularist  eweW 
ments  which  lasted  for  more  than  five  yeara  (loHor) 
Socialism    by    solidarity  of  average  sentiment  (20^205)' 

207"I?m      P      u^i.^'^P^^A'?^"''   """l    *'«   final   "oUapse 

Rbafanx  {211  an^f  ^T^  ^^'^^\^^-     "^^^  Wisconsin  and 
t-ftalanx  (211-213).     The  North  American  Phalanx  (213- 

Tf«  ;  11  °^  T  «''f'«"inent,  "  New  Australia "  (217-225) 
Its  collapse.  Lane's  second  experiment,  and  his  utter  dis 
appoinment  225-226).    His  emphatic  Recognition  that  the 

foSowtrs  (227)"'"*  "'^  """'°«  ^  *^'"  ■*"  '»°^'  ^^''^ 


PAOK 

188 


201 


xiv  CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   DETAILED   LESSONS  OP  EXPERIMENT 

The  motives  to  industry  and  obedience  paralysed  by  all 
schemes  of  arbitrarily  equalised  reward.  *' Undivided 
interests  "  lead  to  individual  impotence  (229).  Insistence 
on  this  fact  by  contemporary  critics  of  the  various  socialist 
ventures  (229-231).  A  socialist  sentiment  does  develop 
itself  in  times  of  extreme  danger,  but  passes  away  with  the 
crisis  (231-232).  Want  of  socialist  sympathy  on  the  part 
of  American  and  Australian  labourers  with  the  Japanese 
(232-233).  Actual  limits  of  altruism  in  ordinary  life  (234- 
235).  Yet,  within  certain  limits,  socialism  inseparable 
from  all  societies  (235-236).  The  vital  task  is  to  discover 
the  extent  to  which,  and  the  limits  within  which  alone 
the  principles  and  projects  of  socialism  are  applicable  to 
practical  aifairs  (237). 


BOOK  V 

TIIE  PHILOSOPHY   OF  SANE  REFORM 

CHAPTER  I 

THE   IDEAL   MINIMUM   WAGE 

Distribution  presents  no  problems  so  long  as  societies 
are  simple  and  individual  workers  or  families  visibly  get 
what  they  produce,  the  amounts  of  their  several  products 
being  not  notably  diflferent  (238-239).  Distribution  pre- 
sents a  problem  only  when  work  becomes  complex  and 
co-operative,  and  some  units  produce  notably  more  than 
others  (239).  Unless  production  is  notably  unequal,  no 
sentiment  is  needed  to  secure  equal  distribution  (239).  In 
this  case  equalitarian  sentiment  must  be  of  a  double  kind, 
inciting  the  great  producers  to  surrender,  and  the  ordinary 
producers  to  seize  (239-240).  Thus  socialist  sentiment  is 
a  demand  that  the  many  shall  live  mainly  on  the  products 
of  the  few.  Some  element  of  truth  even  in  this  seeming 
absurdity  (240).  All  parties  agiee  that  the  wage- earner 
must  not  get  less  in  wages  than  the  value  of  what  he  could 
produce  as  an  independent  worker  (241).  How  is  the  per- 
sonal product  of  any  co-operative  worker  (whether  wage- 
earner  or  employer)  to  be  measured  ?  As  shown  in  a 
former  chapter,  each  man  or  class  produces  so  much  as 
would  not  be  produced  were  he  or  it  inoperative  (241-242) 
Socialist  experiments  embodied  applications  of  this  prin- 
ciple (241-242).    The  personal  product  of  the  wage-earners 


PAOB 


228 


238 


CONTENTS 

as  distinct  from  that  of  the  employers,  is  thus  a  measurable 
quantity  (242-243).  No  wage  can  be  just  which  is  less 
than  the  value  of  the  worker's  personal  product  (242) 
Two  supplements  must  be  added  to  this,  one  being  compen- 
sation for  the  wage-earner's  lost  independence,  the  other 
representing  a  balance  of  net  advantage.  We  thus  reach 
the  wage  of  Industrial  Stability  (244-247).  The  ideal 
minimum  must  be  compounded  of  these  three  elements, 
partly  as  a  matter  of  moral  justice,  and  partly  as  a  matter 

?L'^  OAQ^^^^^  ^''°™  ^^^  ^^^^^  ^^  ^^®^  ^^  ^^^  employers 
\^47— 4w49), 

CHAPTER  II 

MORALS,   WAGES  AND   SECURITY 

*  •  •  •  • 

The  actual  amount  of  the  minimum  will  vary  according 
to  the  wealth  of  diflFerent  countries  (250-251).    But  it  must 
bear  relation  to  moral  facts  as  well  as  economic  (251-252). 
Papal   encyclicals  on  a  morally  just  minimum  (252-263). 
Fantastic  estimates  of  the  requisite  amount  of  the  morally 
just  minimum  (253-254).     Such  exaggerations  merely  en- 
gender a  mood  which  nothing  can  satisfy.    The  just  amount 
must  be  limited  by  national  powers  of  production  (254-255). 
The  largest  minimum  practically  possible  must  be  taken  as 
representing  the  normal  lot  for  the  time  being  (255).    Moral 
justice,  as  distinct  from  commercial  self-interest,  relates  to 
the  minimum  only  (255-256).     But  more  is  involved  in  the 
conception   of  a  just  minimum   than  a  mere   pecuniary 
quantity  (256).     Justice  also  demands  for  the  wage-earner 
secure  opportunities  of  work  (257-258).    Highly-paid  wage- 
earners  may  be  less  secure  than  poor  working  owners  (258- 
259).     All    wealth,  other  than  agricultural,  is  ultimately 
precarious.     Approximate  security  as  an  object  of  practical 
endeavour  (259-261).    Two  other  conditions  demanded  by 
justice  for  the  wage-earner— moral  respect,  and  the  rieht 
to  rise  (261-263).  ^ 

CHAPTER  III 

THE   RIGHT   TO   RESPECT  . 

*  •  •  •  # 

Just  moral  treatment  demanded  by  wage-earners,  as  well 
as  just  and  secure  wages  (264-265).  *'  Overbearing  "  treat- 
ment of  wage-earners  by  employers  (265-266).  Just  moral 
treatment  is  a  recognition  of  actual  moral  equalities  (266- 
267).  Unjust  moral  treatment  on  either  side  provokes  ill- 
temper  which  is  fatal  to  mutual  understanding  (267-268). 
Just  moral  treatment  must  take  account  of  such  inequaU- 
ties,  as  well  as  of  such  inequalities  as  actually  exist  (26^ 
271).  Examples  of  overbearing  treatment  in  pre-revolu- 
tionary  France  and  elsewhere.    Treatment  of  the  labourer 


XV 


PAOK 


250 


264 


XVI 


CONTENTS 


CONTENTS 


xvii 


as  though  he  were  merely  so  much  "  labour  "  (271-273). 
Just  respect  of  wage-earners  for  employers  (273).  Exag- 
gerated attempts  at  conciliation  which  disregard  hard  facts 
(274-276).  Men,  if  justly  treated  in  respect  of  real  equali- 
ties, do  not  naturally  demand  any  absolute  and  fictitious 
equality  (276-277).  This  is  shown  by  actual  popular  de- 
mands in  respect  of  the  Right  to  Rise  (278). 


PAOB 


CHAPTER  IV 


THE    RIGHT    TO    RISE 


The  Right  to  Rise,  or  Equality  of  Opportunity,  one  of 
the  main  demands  of  Revolutionary  France  (279-280). 
This  was  due  to  artificial  restrictions  of  opportunity  (280). 
Equal  opportunity  the  Magna  Charta  of  unequal  achieve- 
ment (280-282).  The  wages  of  exceptional  skill  (282-283). 
" Democratic  education"  as  a  means  of  getting  to  **  the  top 
of  the  tree "  (283-288).  Demands  for  absolute  equality 
mere  protests  against  artificial  inequality  (288-289).  The 
elements  of  truth  and  justice  which  have  been  here  set 
forth  as  latent  in  the  demands  of  socialism  (289-290). 


BOOK  VI 

THE  DATA  OF  CONTENT 


CHAPTER  I 


THE    PSYCHOLOGY    OF    SANE    REFORM  . 


Three  stages  of  socialist  thought.  Modern  reversion  to 
sentiment  as  the  basis  of  a  socialist  policy,  instead  of  the 
facts  of  production,  which  were  the  basis  of  the  Marxian 
doctrine  (291-293).  This  adoption  of  a  psychological,  in- 
stead of  a  purely  industrial  basis,  involves  an  inverted 
psychology  (293).  It  involves  the  assumption  that  interest 
in  others  stands  first  in  the  scale  of  motive,  whereas  it  is 
really  derived  from  an  antecedent  interest  in  self  (294). 
No  one  desires  equality,  as  a  fact  external  to  himself,  for 
its  own  sake  (295).  When  such  equality  is  really  desired, 
it  is  desired  for  the  sake  of  certain  accidental  results,  as 
happens  at  times  in  cases  of  extreme  want  or  danger ; 
otherwise  it  appeals  only  to  the  idle  and  the  jealous 
(295-297).  Even  so,  it  appeals  only  to  individuals,  as 
secretly  dissociating  themselves  from  the  mass  (297).  Pur© 
socialist  sentiment  is  a  mere  psychological  mare's  nest 
(297-298).  The  minimum  wage  with  its  adjuncts  (as  de- 
scribed in  the  foregoing  chapters)  is  rational,  as  contrasted 


279 


291 


with  socialist  demands,  because  it  is  based  primarily  on  the 

"esS'as'Lf  f';''V-     ^""'^-^^y  of^condSn^her: 
aescnbed  as  the  objects  of  sane  reform  (302-303).     How 

IZif^'M  '^'''  *tf^i«-ble?     Certain  difficulties^  in  thi 
Trn^W)  "''"'^         attainment   must  be    considered 

CHAPTER  II 

OBJECTIVE    DIFFICULTIES 



The  objective  difl5culties  most  apparent  in  relation  to  the 
minimum  wage  (305).  The  ideal  minimum  wa^tas  here 
Irn'n  '^'  ''  essentially  contingent  on  work  (306)  Un 
earned  income  possible  for  a  few  only.  No  conceivabL 
polity  could  satisfy  aU  the  idle  (306).  ^  SecuritTof  work 
(3^Sm'  *"-"-ble  in  some  couWes,  but  not^n  others 
(^Ub-JlO).  Causes  which  rendered  unqualified  security  of 
occupation  impossible  in  certain  countries  (310-3m  But 
even  in  such  countries  a  reasonable  security  may  be 
KTw'^  ^f^f^?^-    I''  "P^^^  ^'^^  objective  difficulties 

CHAPTER  III 

SUBJECTIVE    DIFFICULTIES 

Popular  discontent  often  due  to  ideas  as  distinct  from 
experienced  facts  (313).    A  just  minimum  must  not  onlyT 
just ;  the  recipients  must  know  it  to  be  so  (314).     Further 
even  should  the  recipients  know  that  a  certain  minimum  U 

t  tn*";;?™ ''  ^^J^'  'he  imagination  of  each  migitTOt 
It  to  him  as  insufficient  for  himself  (314-315)  The  indis- 
criminate encouragement  of  personal  ambition  as  a  stimulus 
to  discontent  with  even  the  best  conditions  j^ssibr for 
any  large  number  of  men  (316).    Two  kinds  of  education 

?3irsi7^  ^  n "*"'  <iT"*"°.'  "^''^  ^  <»"«  to  merefdeas 
K,;V  ;':•  .■    i*,'^  *  dissemination   of  knowledge  as  to 

nation  (dlb-317).   Statistical  education,  its  scope  (317-318) 
Immense  effect  of  false  statistics,  e.j.  those  of  Mari  and 

c^rrJf  ^r/«^-     ^,'f'"  f?'^«  atatisticlcan  do,  subTntiS 
correct  statistics  will  tend  to  undo  (318-323).   The  iraagini^ 

Tf°°r,^f  "  fe'"';V'"8  *"''  protesting  influence  (323-324). 
If    not   artificially    inflamed,   the    imagination    tends    to 

erc?"^f  ""f  V'.'f  *?•  P-^"^^''^-  (324).°The  i^flammator^ 
lxltr,\L<l2^^^  Z  t  ^""^''■^  standai-ds  of  living^ 
ezamples  (32i>-326).  Striking  example  of  agitators  revert- 
ing  to  a  natural  standard  in  the  iase  of  the  HiaMand 

regard  to  life  taken  as  a  whole  (328-329). 


PAOI 


305 


313 


XVIU 


CONTENTS 


BOOK  VII 

DEMOCRACY  AND  THE   FINAL  LIFE-PROCESS 


CHAPTER  I 


THE  MATERIAL  DATA  OF  CONTENT 


PAOB 

.     330 


Government,  war  and  industry  alike  subserve  the  drama 
of  individual  life,  or  social  intercourse  (330-331).    In  all 
highly  civilised  states  these  three  subservient  activities  are 
oligarchic  ;  but  the  final  end,  namely  social  intercourse,  is 
democratic  (332).     Social  intercourse  for  the  individual  is 
not  a  national   process,  but  a  group-process,  each   group 
being  numerically  small  (332-334).     Within  the  limits  of 
each  group  social  intercourse  is  democratic  (334-335).     The 
inner  democratic  lives  of  these  social  groups  are  a  democracy 
imposing  orders  on  the  oligarchies  of  subservient  effort, 
and  notably  on   the  industrial  oligarchy  (334-335).     The 
influence  of  the  social  democracies  on  architecture  (335-336). 
The  influence  of  social  democracies  on  the  production  of  all 
superfluous  goods,  or  "  riches  "  (336).     The  real  substance 
of  income  not  money  but  goods,  which  are  bought  mainly 
at  shops  (337).      Difference  between  Needs  and  Tastes 
(337-338).     Riches  as  distinct  from  bare  sufficiencies  are 
goods  that  minister  to  Tastes,  Tastes  indefinitely  various 
(338-339).      Democracy  in   shopping   analysed   (339-340). 
Demand  in  shopping  imposes  purely  democratic  orders  on 
the  oligarchy  of  production  (340-341).      Such  democracy 
much    more   complete    than   any   democracy   possible   in 
complex   politics  (341).      Each   customer  determines  the 
substance  of  his  real  income  (342).     Examples  of  how  the 
same  wage-income  is  converted  into  different  real  incomes, 
of   which  some  mean  aflQuence,  others  poverty  (342-344). 
The  real  income  is  the  man,  so  far  as  material  things  are 
concerned  (345). 

CHAPTER  II 

THE  MENTAL  DATA  OF  CULTUBB 

Just  as  politics  and  industry  subserve  real  income,  so 
does  real  income  subserve  mental  and  moral  culture  (346- 
347).  The  Life  of  Knowledge,  the  Life  of  Art,  the  Life  of 
Religion  (346-347).  These  lives  oligarchic  in  origin  on  one 
side,  but  essentially  democratic  on  another  (348-349). 
This  is  specially  clear  in  the  case  of  religion  (349-350). 
Democracy  in  one  sense  the  final  process,  but  the  higher 
forms  of  democratic  life  are  only  achieved  through  oli- 
garchy (351).  Current  ideas  which  militate  against  content 
under  the  best  possible  conditions  re-examined  (352). 


i( 


346 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  MOOD  OF  VAGUE  REBELLION 

•  •  •  • 

Any  lot  which  man  can  reasonably  covet  must,  by  impli- 

mar^/^hl  ^"^''^^  r^^^^^  ^f  ^)     The  exceptional  man 

3  A.  i^^^^^)-  I^  the  average  reward  does  not  con- 
tent the  ordinary  man,  his  discontent  must  be  due  not  to 
ImT;    f     "^ere  niood  or  temper  (354-355).     Striking  ex- 

bv  whlh  ZTr^Tif-  ?"'"'  ^.^^'^^  (355-356).  Methods 
whilwK  «^^*l^«t  thinkers  endeavour  to  insinuate  moods 
which  they  cannot  defend  by  direct  reasoning  (356^57) 
These  methods  evade  the  direct  facts  of  economics.  Two 
great  examples.  Practicability  of  exposing  them  False 
conception  of  the  State.  FalL  inter^pretafion  of '  hiltory 
(^57-Jo8).  Ludicrously  false  analogy  between  the  State 
and  an  animal  organism  (358-361).     Partial  analogy  be- 

tT/S.  f  \^'''''  ""^'"^  ^'  ^^^^  *^  *"  «««ialist  suggestion, 
ine  fetate  has  no  common  sensorium  (362).     The  socialist 

t^rW?fiA'«^r^^A  ^T  *?  ^^/"^^  misinterpretation  of  his- 
tory (362-363).  Analysis  of  this  misinterpretation  which 
H^s  formulated  by  Marx  (3G2-365).  The  peculiar  Jower 
of  the  few  operative  m  all  civilisations  (e.  g.  those  of  the 
tlZ^'f  ^^\^^^«^«  (365-367).  Origin  of  this  paradoxical 
pow  er  everywhere  exercised  by  the  few  (367-369).  Social- 
ist history  represents  this  power  as  due  everywhere  to 
accidents  Such  a  theory  absolutely  false.  It  excludes 
the  mam  fact  which  renders  history  intelligible  (367-369). 

finrK^^^rof '  i""  ^"^'^^'-^  ^^"^^y  *^«^^  i«  «ne  element  of 
truth  (369).  In  past  times  the  few  (mainly  representing 
military  force)  have  lived  on  abstractions  fronT  national 
wealth  not  on  additions  to  it  (369-370).  Diflference  be- 
tween the  modern  industrial  oligarchy  and  other  forms  of 
oligarchy  which  preceded  it  (370-371).  The  wealth  of  the 
scientific  employer  comes  from  additions,  in  which  the 
employed  participate.  The  participation  of  the  employed 
the  foundation  of  stability  (371).  Participation  involves 
obedience  (371).  The  root  of  impracticable  discontent  is 
compnsed  in  the  formula  of  pure  democracy,  which  repre- 
sents civilisation  as  a  result  of  the  co-operation  of  equals. 

CHAPTER  IV 

OBJECT-LESSONS   OP   TO-DAY       . 

•  •  •  •  • 

The  few  being  necessary  agents  in  all  complex  govern- 
ment, m  efticient  production  and  in  culture,  from  what  is 
the  power  of  the  few  derived  ?  (373).    According  to  modern 


XIX 


PAGE 


353 


373 


XX 


CONTENTS 


thinkers,  and  even  early  Catholic  theologians,  it  is  an  axiom 
that  all  power  is  ultimately  derived  from  **  the  people  " 
(373-374).  Fundamental  error  of  this  doctrine  (374).  The 
authority  of  the  few  ultimately  derived  neither  from  the 
divine  right  of  kings,  nor  from  **  the  people,"  but  from 
Nature  (374-375).  Nature  compels  men  to  agriculture  and 
the  production  of  necessaries  (375).  If  *'  the  people  "  wish 
for  a  profusion  of  supei-fluities  and  for  national  security, 
Nature  compels  them  to  obey  the  few  who  alone  can  enable 
them  to  achieve  these  ends  (376-377).  If  "  the  people  "  do 
not  obey  the  few,  Nature,  teaching  them  by  results,  is  the 
power  that  will  re-compel  the  many  to  obedience  (376-377). 
The  example  of  the  Russian  revolution  as  a  rebellion 
"against  all  controlling  persons  "  (377-378).  Absurd  and 
suicidal  conduct  of  Russian  peasants,  as  described  by  an 
English  socialist  (378-380).  Curious  absence  of  any  senti- 
ment of  **  each  for  all  "  (380).  Similar  conduct  of  factory 
workers  (381).  The  impending  "  economic  crash  "  (381- 
382).  Comments  of  an  English  socialist.  **  Impossible 
expectations  "  denounced  (382).  Agreement  of  such  criti- 
cisms with  the  argument  of  the  present  work  (:582-383). 
Socialist  demands  for  a  revolutionary  dictator,  who  shall 
undo  the  results  of  his  own  previous  teachings  (;^:^384). 
Pretence  of  a  revolutionary  dictator  that  he  is  still  a  revolu- 
tionary democrat  (384-385).  The  Russian  revolution  and 
oligarchies  of  middle-class  adventurers  (385-387).  Similar 
claims  of  oligarchs  to  be  pure  democrats  in  England  and 
America  (388-389).  English  labour-leaders  as  oligarchs  in 
secret  session  (389).  Fatal  tendency  of  statesmen  of  the 
highest  capacity  to  pose  as  pure  democrats,  and  deny  the 
oligarchic  power  which  alone  makes  them  beneficially  in- 
fluential (389-390).  Let  all  beneficial  wielders  of  oligar- 
chic power  have  the  courage  to  show  themselves  in  their 
true  colours  (391-392).  Democracy  only  knows  itself 
through  the  co-operation  of  oligarchy  (392). 


THE 

LIMITS  OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

BOOK    I 
POLITICAL  DEMOCRACY 

CHAPTER   I 

THE  CONCEPTION  OF  A  GENERAL  WILL 

Attention  has  often  been  called  to  the  astonishing 
extent  to  which  the  thoughts,  the  passions  and  the 
actions  of  vast  multitudes  of  men  have  been  vitiated 
or  misdirected  by  the  use  of  ambiguous  language.  A 
signal  example  of  this  fact  may  be  found  in  the  doctrines 
of  a  writer  who,  more  perhaps  than  any  other,  was 
instrumental  in  inflaming  the  passions  which  gave  force 
to  the  first  French  Revolution. 

"Man  is  born  free,  and  is  everywhere  in  chains." 
55uch  are  the  opening  words  of  the  most  celebrated  work 
of  Rousseau;  and  though  the  philosophy  of  Rousseau 
hiniself  IS  by  this  time  largely  obsolete,  these  words 
to-day  are  significant  in  a  sense  far  deeper,  though  quite 
other,  than  that  which  their  author  and  his  disciples 
imputed  to  them.  To  Rousseau  they  seemed,  and  to 
multitudes  they  have  seemed  also,  the  condensed  expres- 
sion of  some  liberating  and  momentous  truth.  Indeed 
even  to-day,  if  repeated  to  audiences  of  a  certain  kind, 
they  would  doubtless  be  received  with  acclamation. 
But  anybody  who  takes  them  to  pieces  in  the  daylight 
of  common  intelligence,  will  now  discover  that  they 
either  mean  nothing  at  all,  or  else  that  they  mean  some- 
thing which,  even  if  true,  is  absolutely  without  import- 

B 


2        LIMITS  OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

ance.    It  will  be  interesting  here  to  submit  them  to  a 
short  but  a  close  analysis. 

If  there  is  anything  really  important  in  what  they 
profess  to  enunciate,  this  obviously  is  comprised  in  the 
first  four  of  them — "  Man  is  born  free  "  :  the  assertion 
that  he  is  "  everywhere,"  as  an  actual  fact,  "  in  chains  " 
being  nothing  more  than  a  rhetorical  way  of  saying  that 
the  actions  of  the  human  unit  are,  under  existing  con- 
ditions, artificially  hampered  by  the  actions  of  units 
other  than  himself.  Hence,  when  the  man  who  is 
"  free  "  and  the  man  who  is  in  "  chains  "  are  contrasted, 
the  former  is  understood  to  differ  from  the  latter  in  the 
fact  that  his  way  of  life  and  his  actions  are  determined 
by  himself  only — by  his  temperament,  his  desires,  and 
the  extent  of  his  personal  faculties — and  are  not 
controlled  by  others  in  opposition  to  his  own  bent. 

Such,  then,  being  here  the  meaning  of  the  word 
"  free,"  what,  let  us  ask  next,  is  the  meaning  of  the 
word  ''man"?  Since  here  it  is  plainly  synonymous 
with  "the  individual  human  being,"  its  meaning  may 
at  first  sight  seem  to  be  clear  enough.  But  this  is  not 
so ;  for,  even  when  defined  thus  far,  it  may  mean  either 
the  human  being  at  any  stage  of  its  existence,  or  it  may 
mean  the  human  adult  as  distinguished  from  the  child 
or  baby.  There  is  also  an  ambiguity  which  attaches 
itself  to  the  words  "is  born."  If  these  are  taken  liter- 
ally, the  only  human  beings  that  are  born  at  all  are 
babies ;  and  to  say  that  "  man  is  born  free  "  must  mean, 
and  can  mean  only,  that  babies  are  born  free ;  and  this 
again  must  mean,  if  it  means  anything,  that  so  long  as 
they  are  utterly  helpless  their  condition  and  actions  are 
determined  by  no  desires,  by  no  intelligence,  and  by  no 
judgments  but  their  own.  The  mothers  of  the  human 
race  will  hardly  endorse  this  proposition  as  accurate, 
nor  will  anybody  claim  much  value  for  it  as  a  contribu- 
tion to  social  science. 

Let  us,  however,  suppose  that  when  "man  "  is  stated 
to  be  "born  free,"  the  statement  is  not  to  be  taken  in 
its  strict  obstetrical  sense,  but  means  that,  though 
doubtless  born  in  a  natural  condition  of  dependence, 
he  naturally  comes  to  be  free  by  a  process  of  post-natal 
development.     This  meaning  is  at  all  events  less  absurd 


THE  DREAM   OF  ROUSSEAU 


3 


than  the  other ;  but  let  us  consider  if  it  is  true.  If  it  is 
true  at  all,  it  must  be  true  of  actual  human  beings,  either 
as  they  exist  to-day  or  as  they  existed  once  on  the 
surface  of  the  earth  somewhere.  That  is  to  say,  in  the 
lifetime  of  every  average  individual  a  period  normally 
arrives,  or  normally  did  so  in  the  past,  when  his  actions 
cease  or  ceased  to  be  "chained,"  controlled  or  limited 
by  the  actions  and  existence  of  anybody  except  himself ; 
for  if  no  such  freedom  is  exemplified  in  the  history  of 
human  nature  it  would  be  nonsense  to  represent  such 
freedom  as  natural,  and  it  would  similarly  be  nonsense 
to  represent  the  so-called  "chains"  as  artificial. 

Is  it,  then,  possible  to  discover  any  portion  of  the 
earth  s  surface  where  either  now  or  formerly  such  free- 
dom either  is,  or  ever  has  been,  achieved  by  the  inhabit- 
ants as  a  natural  incident  of  their  maturity,  and  enjoyed 
by  them  m  peace  thenceforwards  without  any  "chains  " 
to  limit  It?  The  answer  is  that,  with  a  few  chance 
exceptions,  a  freedom  of  this  kind  is  altogether  ima- 
ginary. Just  as  every  baby  is  bound  to  have  two 
parents,  most  adults  are  bound  to  mate  and  to  have 
babies,  for  unless  they  did  so  the  human  race  would 
end ;  and  as  soon  as  a  man  sets  himself  to  woo,  and  keep 
on  terms  with  a  mate,  and  as  soon  as  children  are  born 
for  whom  he  must  provide  food,  his  actions  begin 
through  the  operations  not  of  artifice,  but  of  Nature,  to 
be  so  "chained  "  by  the  existence  and  the  demands  of 
others  that  they  differ  inevitably  from  what  they  would 
be  if  he  lived  alone.  To  say  that  a  man  is  naturally  free 
as  soon  as  he  achieves  maturity  is  no  truer  than  to  say 
that  he  is  born  free  as  a  baby.  Here  and  there,  there 
may  be  a  free  baby ;  here  and  there,  there  may  be  a  free 
adult ;  but  the  only  kind  of  baby  that  is  free  is  the  baby 
that  is  left  to  die,  and  the  only  kind  of  free  adult  is  the 
solitary  on  a  desert  island. 

Here,  then,  in  this  insane  proposition  that  "man  is 
born  free,"  and  in  the  wide  effects  produced  by  it  on 
the  thoughts  and  temper  of  multitudes,  we  have  a  signal 
example  of  the  condition  of  moral  and  mental  chaos  to 
which  language  used  ambiguously  is  able  to  reduce  man- 
kind, causing  their  demands  and  arguments  to  resemble 
the  cries  of  animals  vaguely  conscious  of  anger,  disease, 


4        LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

or  wounds,  rather  than  a  rational  diagnosis  of  what  is 
really  the  matter  with  them.  From  this  prefatory 
example  we  will  now  pass  on  to  another,  for  ourselves 
far  more  important-namely,  the  chaos  of  thought  and 
sentiment,  of  which  the  nucleus  is  the  word  Demo- 
cracy "  as  used  at  the  present  time. 

"  Democracy  "  is  a  word  which,  whatever  it  may  mean 
otherwise,  is  now,  with  equal  frequency,  used  in  several 
senses,  the  epithet  -political"  being  used  to  indicate 
the  one,  the  epithets  -industrial ''and  -social  "  being 
used   to   indicate    the    others.     The    first    is    of    great 
antiquity,  the  second  and  third  are  modern,  and  between 
the  first  and  the  latter  two,  even  popular  thought  draws 
a  fairly  clear  distinction.      The  principles,   indeed,   of 
industrial  and  social  democracy,  by  those  who  project 
and  look  forward  to  their  triumph  in  the  near  future, 
are  consciously  regarded  as  novel  extensions  of  ^  Prin- 
ciple  the  action  of  which  is  already  familiar  in  the  sphere 
of  political  government.     Hence  political  democracy  is 
re-arded  by  all  parties  as  democracy  m  the  basic  form 
with  which  all  argument  as  to  its  nature  and  the  extent 
of  its  application  starts;  and  political  government,  m 
respect  of  its  current  functions  and  limitations,  means 
for  all  parties  substantially  the  same  thmg.     Its  objec^, 
whether  achieved  by  restriction,  adjudication,  or  com- 
mand   are  understood  to  be  limited  to  the  maintenance 
^d  improvement  of  such  general  conditions  as  will  for 
each  citizen,  in  respect  of  his  private  life,  guarantee  the 
rlsfredom   which   consists   with   the   freedom   ^^ 
others,  and  which  the  scope  of  his  own  talents  enables 

him  to  utilise  for  himself.       ,    ,      .       ^.  .  r^^iifip«l 

This  general  conception  of  the  functions  of  polit  cal 
governments  being  assumed,  the  word  -Democracy,  if 
Imbiffuous  in  its  political  sense,  is  not  ambiguous  for 
waS  of  a^^^^  to  define  it.     Professed  democrats  ai^ 

ronstantly  addressing  themselves  to  the  task  of  describ- 
Semocracy  as  a  peculiar  system  of  government,  and 
deficits  pecuUar  features  with  an  ostentatious  sem- 
blance  of  precision ;  but,  the  moment  their  definitions 
ar^  analysed,  all  of  them,  as  we  shall  see  presently,  fall 
trnS  leaving  no  idea  behind  them  which  has  any 
couK^rt  tn  the  world  of  actual  or  of  possible  fact. 


DEFINITIONS  OF  DEMOCRACY         5 

This  assertion  must  not  be  taken  to  mean  that  such 
persons  are  attempting  to  define  a  nothing.  On  the  con- 
trary, they  have  all  of  them  at  the  back  of  their  minds 
a  something  so  profoundly  real  that,  although  it  is 
operative  in  very  various  degrees,  it  is  never  absent  from 
the  government  of  any  human  society;  and  if  we  want 
to  understand  what  this  something  really  is,  we  must  set 
ourselves  to  consider  exactly  how  far,  and  why,  it  differs 
from  those  conceptions  of  it  which  all  current  definitions 
popularise. 

Of  these  current  definitions,  which  naturally  exhibit 
much  verbal  variety,  we  will  accordingly  take  three 
versions,  which  everybody  will  recognise  as  signally,  and 
also  as  favourably,  representative. 

Our  first  shall  be  the  most  famous  of  all — still  un- 
rivalled as  a  talisman  for  eliciting  instant  cheers — 
namely,  the  definition  of  a  great  American  statesman  : 
-Democracy  means  government  of  the  people,  for  the 
people,  by  the  people." 

Our  second  shall  be  that  of  a  more  recent  authority — 
an  American  likewise  and  a  very  distinguished  publicist, 
according  to  whom  democracy  is  a  special  system  of 
government  which  ensures  that  -  every  man,  in  virtue 
of  his  manhood  alone,  shall  have  an  equal  voice  in  the 
affairs  of  the  common  country." 

Our  third  definition  shall  be  taken  from  a  contem- 
porary English  writer,  Mr.  Cecil  Chesterton,  whose  style 
has  a  ring  of  homely  common  sense  like  Cobbett's,  and 
who,  in  a  volume  entitled  The  Great  State,^  has  joined 
certain  other  reformers  in  a  very  temperate  attempt  to 
harmonise  the  dreams  of  revolutionaries  with  the  bald 
actualities  of  life.  The  definition  which  Mr.  Chesterton 
contributes  to  this  volume,  being  given  at  some  length 
and  not  in  the  form  of  an  aphorism,  may  be  briefly 
summed  up  thus.  Democracy  in  its  essence  is  govern- 
ment which,  by  whatever  means,  is  actually  in  accord- 
ance with  the  general  will  of  the  governed ;  and  ideally 
this  result  might  be  realised  by  an  ideal  despot.  Prac- 
tically, however,  ideal  despotisms  are  impossible;  and 
no  less  impossible,  except  in  microscopic  communities, 

*  A  Collection  of  Essays  by  Enelish  writers  of  Socialist  or  semi- 
Socialist  Sympathies,  edited  by  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells. 


0        LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

is  government  by  the  extreme  alternative--namely,  the 
voice  of  all  the  citizens  assembled  under  the  same  tree 
The  only  device,  therefore,  which  is  practicable  in  the 
great  States  of  to-day  is  the  election  by  the  many  of  a 
small  number  of  delegates,  to  ^^om  the  mass  of  the 
citizens  specify  what  -the  general  will''  is  and  whose 
sole  business  is  to  execute  it  m  ^^^^/^ance  with  the 
terms  specified.     True  democracy  exists,  so  this  writer 

proceeds,  in  proportion,  and  only  ^  P^^P^^V'''''/"  onH 
correspoAdence  between  the  action  of  the  delegates  and 

the  general  will  is  complete.  ,  ^   v,-         ^^^^  f^ 

Let  us  now  consider  what  these  definitions  come  to, 
beginning  with  the  first  and  most  famous  of  them. 

ms  definition  consists  of  three  separate  statements : 
firstly,  that  Democracy  is  government  0/  the  people, 
secondly,  that  it  is  government  /or  the  people ;  and 
thirdlv    that   it   is   government   by  the   people.     It   is 
obS  that  the  first  purports  to  enunciate  something 
which,  however  profound,  can  at  once  be  g^aspe^  by 
Tverybody ;  whilst  the  second  adds  something  more  pro- 
found and  distinctive  still,  and  that  both  lead  up  to  the 
cumulative  profundity  of  the  last.     Let  ^s  ^s^    *^^^^' 
what  intelligible  meaning  can  be  possibly  ^ead  into  each 
To  begin,  then,  with  the  first—"  government  of  the 
people  "is  a  phrase  which,  with  equal  verbal  propriety, 
Cy  be  taken  as  meaning  either  of  two  opposite  things 
It  may  mean  government  exercised  over  the  people  by 
some  power  elternal  to  them-a  meamng  like    hat  of 
thrpreacher  whenhe  speaks  about  the  government  of  the 
pass'^ons;  or  it  may  mean  government  which  the  peopk 
themselves  exercise.     It  cannot,  however,  bear  the  latter 
of  these  two  meanings  here ;  for  this,  without  any  ambig- 
uitv    is  reserved  for  the  final  statement  that  democracy 
Ts  JoVer^S  by  the  people,  which  either  means  this  or 
noS      Unless,  therefore,  it  is  an  mstance  of  pure 
?autoSy,  government  of  the  people  must  mean  govern- 
ment  wh  ch  is  somehow  exercised  over  them ;   and  it 
must  hi  so  far  as  it  is  realised  in  any  concrete  case  mean 
Zernment  exercised  over  the  people  of  some  particular 
Kr^    As  to  the  second  statement,  its  meaning  is  as 
Snls  that  of  the  last.     Government  /or  the  people 
Sust  mean,  in  any  concrete  case,  government  carried  on 


DEFINITIONS   OF  DEMOCRACY         7 

in  the  interest  of  the  people  of  a  particular  country,  and 
not  in  the  interest  of  the  people  of  any  other.  What, 
then,  is  the  meaning  of  the  three  statements  in  combina- 
tion? Its  three  clauses  being  combined,  this  world- 
famous  definition  of  democracy  reduces  itself  to  the  fol- 
lowing propositions :  that  Democracy  in  any  concrete 
case — let  us  say  in  the  case  of  France — is  government 
which  is  exercised  over  the  French  people,  and  not  (for 
example)  over  the  German;  that  it  is  exercised  by  the 
people  of  France,  not  by  the  people  of  Germany;  and 
that  it  is  exercised  by  the  people  of  France  with  a  view 
to  their  own  advantage. 

Now  what,  with  all  its  solemn  crescendo  of  emphasis, 
does  this  definition  convey  to  the  mind  of  any  human 
being  which  was  not  in  his  mind  already  before  he  began 
to  listen  to  it  ?  What  is  it  more  than  a  sequence  of 
superlatively  barren  platitudes?  And  yet  after  all  it 
must,  as  addressed  to  millions,  be  the  vehicle  of  some- 
thing vital :  or  it  would  never  be  quoted  as  a  watchword, 
and  call  forth  plaudits,  as  a  spark  sets  fire  to  gunpowder. 
In  what  part  of  it,  then,  does  its  vital  meaning  reside  ? 
Its  vital  meaning,  its  sole  distinctive  meaning,  resides 
in  nothing  that  the  words  say  by  way  of  an  informative 
proposition.  It  resides  in  some  sense,  altogether  un- 
stated, which  is  presupposed  to  be  already  attached  to 
one  of  them  ;  and  that  word  is  the  word  "  people."  This 
presupposed  sense  is  like  the  skin  of  a  drum,  and  the 
so-called  definition  is  nothing  but  a  drum-stick  beating 
a  tattoo  on  it. 

This  drum-beating,  however,  does  us  one  service  at  all 
events.  Though  answering  no  question  itself,  it  loudly 
calls  attention  to  the  question  which  requires  to  be 
answered.  What,  in  detail,  for  persons  calling  them- 
selves "  democrats,"  does  this  one  word  "  people  "  mean, 
thereby  for  them  acquiring  its  peculiar  resonance  ?  The 
"people  "  of  any  country  cannot,  in  this  connection,  be 
merely  a  synonym  for  the  inhabitants  taken  as  a  whole, 
as  it  would  be  were  we  classifying  peoples  according  to 
their  racial  colours.  It  must  carry  with  it  some  implica- 
tion of  a  narrower  and  more  incisive  kind.  It  must 
mean,  and  it  obviously  does  mean,  one  or  other  of  two 
things — either  some  particular  section  of  the  inhabitants, 


8        LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

which  governs  or  ought  to  govern,  to  the  specific  exclu- 
sion of  some  other  section;  or  else  the  whole  of  the 
inhabitants,  regarded  as  a  governing  body,  to  the  specific 
inclusion  of  some  section  which  is,  under  certain  forms 
of  government,  excluded. 

Now  there  are  doubtless  many  agitators  who,  animated 
by  passion  or  prejudice,  would  maintain  that  the  former 
of  these  two  meanings  is  the  correct  one,  and  that 
government  by  the  people  means  the  specific,  and  indeed 
the  vindictive,  exclusion  of  all  individuals  from  power 
who  are  in  any  way  sufficiently  eminent  to  be  distinguish- 
able as  a  separate  class.  But  no  democrats  of  to-day, 
who  claim  to  be  serious  thinkers,  commit  themselves 
intentionally  to  any  position  such  as  this.  On  the  con- 
trary, as  Mill  points  out,  they  profess  altogether  to 
repudiate  it.  The  essence  of  "  pure  democracy  "  accord- 
ing to  modern  conceptions  of  it  is,  says  Mill,  "  govern- 
ment by  the  people  as  a  whole,"  no  individuals  being 
excluded,  whether  high  or  low,  and  none  of  them  having 
less  power,  though  none  may  have  more,  than  any  others. 
This  conception  is  expressed  with  unmistakable  clearness 
in  the  second  of  those  definitions  of  Democracy  which 
have  here  been  chosen  for  examination,  and  to  which 
we  will  now  turn. 

The  essence  of  political  democracy,  according  to  this 
definition  of  it,  is  "that  every  man  shall  have  an  equal 
voice  in  the  affairs  of  the  common  country,"  and  that 
he  shall  have  this  equal  voice  "  in  virtue  of  his  manhood 
alone."  Here  again  we  have  a  formula  the  ultimate 
purport  of  which  must  be  looked  for  in  what  it  implies 
rather  than  in  what  it  enunciates;  but  what  it  does 
enunciate  is  so  precise  that  its  full  implications  can  be 
reached  by  a  use  of  the  simplest  losric ;  and  in  realising 
what  these  are  the  author  himself  aids  us.  The  formula 
in  question  does  not,  he  says  with  the  utmost  emphasis, 
imply  that  all  men  are  equal,  or  even  approximately 
equal  in  all  respects.  On  the  contrary,  "the  differences 
between  men  and  men  in  their  capacities  for  rendering 
honest  service  to  society  are,"  he  says,  "immense  and 
incalculable,"  as  may  be  seen  in  the  spheres  of  art, 
philosophic  thought,  and  more  particularly  the  scientific 
control  of  industry.     In  the  general  business  of  life,  this 


i 


GOVERNMENT   BY  AVERAGE   MAN      9 

writer  freely  admits,  it  is  the  influence  of  exceptional 
men  that  makes  the  world  move  onwards;  but  in  the 
sphere  of  political  government — and  here  we  come  to 
what  his  formula  really  means — it  is  the  essence  of 
democracy  to  render  all  such  influence  inoperative.  The 
doctrine  that  the  right  of  each  citizen  to  "an  equal 
voice,"  or  to  one  vote  and  only  one,  "  in  the  government 
of  the  common  country  "  is  a  right  which  belongs  to  him 
"in  virtue  of  his  manhood  alone,"  means  this,  and  it 
cannot  mean  anything  else.  It  means  that  the  ground 
on  which  a  citizen  is  entitled  to  vote  is  simply  and  solely 
his  possession  of  those  residual  characteristics  which 
enable  an  anthropologist  to  distinguish  a  man  from  an 
erect  monkey.  It  is  these  residual  characteristics  that 
each  vote  represents,  and  it  is  because  these  character- 
istics are  equal  that  each  vote  should  have  an  equal 
value.  Hence,  if  this  definition  of  political  democracy 
be  correct,  true  democracy  must  be  government  deter- 
mined by  faculties  which,  however  unequal  actually, 
have  for  this  special  purpose  been  reduced  artificially 
to  their  lowest  common  denominator.  It  might  recog- 
nise in  a  Newton  a  master  of  all  mathematical  science, 
but  it  would  not  allow  him,  in  examining  the  business 
books  of  the  nation,  to  impose  on  his  fellows  any  con- 
clusions with  regard  to  them  which  his  washerwoman 
could  not  arrive  at  just  as  well  as  he  by  use  of  the  simple 
arithmetic  required  for  adding  up  her  bills. 

Such  would  be  the  result,  in  strict  or  abstract  logic,  if 
democracy  means  government  by  all  as  units  of  equal 
influence.  But  practically,  though  not  in  the  abstract, 
the  principles  of  even  the  strictest  doctrinaires  lead  to 
a  conclusion  which  is  much  more  moderate  than  this. 
All  such  persons  recognise  when  they  talk  of  equality 
the  existence  of  some  men  so  low  in  the  scale  of  intelli- 
gence, or  by  temperament  so  perverse  or  slothful,  that 
no  State  which  consisted  solely  of  men  like  these  could 
thrive.  Indeed,  Socialists  often  admit  that  in  dealing 
with  such  a  residuum  a  Socialist  polity  would  have  to 
resort  to  measures  not  less  but  more  severe  than  any 
which  are  applied  to-day.  They  certainly  would  never 
contend  that  men  who,  possessing  nothing,  refuse  to 
produce  anything,  or  that  idiots  or  obstinate  drunkards, 


10      LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

should  be  able  to  influence  legislation  in  accordance  with 
their  own  ideas.  The  extremest  democrats,  however, 
may  without  practical  inconsistency  maintain  that  such 
men  should  have  votes  nevertheless,  for  such  men  being 
necessarily  a  small  minority,  the  cumulative  power  of 
their  votes  would,  if  it  stood  for  anything  mischievous, 
be  nullified  by  the  votes  of  a  normally  sane  majority. 
Thus  the  abstract  theorem  that  under  a  true  democracy 
the  power  of  all  citizens  would  be  equal  in  virtue  of  their 
manhood  alone  is  modified  by  the  theorem  that  the  power 
of  each  would  in  practice  be  contingent  on  his  manhood 
being  of  an  average  or  a  normal  kind.  And  here  we 
reach  what  to  all  intents  and  purposes  is  the  working 
conception  of  democracy  which  is  at  the  present  day 
implied  in  the  formulae  of  doctrinaires,  and  which  floats 
in  the  minds  of  multitudes.  It  is  a  conception  of  a 
government  determined  solely  by  the  mass  of  incon- 
spicuous men — by  what  Whitman,  the  poet  of  demo- 
cracy, celebrates  as  "the  divine  average." 

Now,  apart  from  certain  facts  which  will  claim  our 
attention  presently,  this  conception  is  very  far  from 
fantastic.  For  what  is  it  that  ideally  the  average  man 
represents  ?  He  represents  common  honesty,  common 
sense,  common  neighbourly  goodwill,  and  the  common 
family  affections.  He  is  moreover  so  far  from  being  an 
abstraction  that,  if  average  men  in  this  sense  did  not 
form  the  majority  of  mankind,  no  social  life  of  a  tolerable 
kind  would  be  possible.  The  most  towering  genius  in 
respect  of  his  household  conduct  must  reason,  feel,  and 
comport  himself  like  nine  men  out  of  every  ten,  or  else 
there  will  be  no  dealing  with  him.  Why,  then,  it  may  be 
asked,  should  not  political  government  be  determined 
by  men  acting  as  equal  units  through  an  exercise  of  those 
faculties  only  in  respect  of  which  all  average  men  are 
equal  ?  Is  there  anything  in  the  nature  of  the  case  to 
make  such  a  regime  impossible  ? 

The  answer  is  that  there  are  two  things,  the  first  of 
which  is  as  follows  :  We  have  seen  that  the  most  obvious 
difficulty  which,  in  strict  or  abstract  logic,  the  theory 
of  democracy  suggests — namely,  that  it  reduces  the  units 
of  influence  to  their  lowest  common  denominator — is 
solved  by  the  fact  that  persons  of  appreciably  subnormal 


f#l 


EXCEPTIONAL  TALENT  n 

character  would  have  in  practice  no  influence  at  all. 
But,  though  m  this  way  the  difficulty  which  comes  from 
below  IS  ehmmated,  the  corresponding  difficulty  which 
comes  from  above  remains.  For  just  as,  if  the  influence 
of  every  unit  is  equal,  the  judgments  of  ninety  average 
men  would  nullify  those  of  any  ten  men  who  were  sub- 
normal, so  likewise  would  the  judgments  of  the  average 
ninety  nullify  those  of  any  ten  men  their  superiors  in  so 
far  as  these,  by  the  exercise  of  superior  talents,  reached 
any  conclusions  which  anybody  not  notably  imbecile 
could  not  entire  y  understand,  and  was  not  on  the  point 
of  reaching  by  his  own  unaided  faculties.  Else,  if  the 
ninety  voters  allowed  the  ten  to  guide  them,  ten  men 
would  have  the  votes  of  ninety  other  men  in  their 
pockets,  and  the  primary  principle  of  pure  democracy 
would  be  violated.  ^ 

Here  is  one  of  the  difficulties  involved  in  the  very 
plausible  conception  of  democracy  as  government  deter- 
mined by  the  people  alone,  the  word  "people"  bein^ 
taken  as  meaning  the  units  of  the  average  mass.     But 
below  this  difficulty  lies  another  of  a  yet  more  funda- 
mental kind  ;  and  in  order  to  gain  a  clear  idea  of  what 
this  ditticulty  is  we  will  now  pass  on  to  the  third  of  the 
three  definitions  of  democracy  which  have  here  been 
cited  as  typical,  and  consider  it  more  minutely.     All 
theories  of  democracy  as  government  by  the  will  of  the 
people  involve  an  assumption,  which  we  have  not  as  yet 
noted,  that  if  we  only  exclude  the  upper  and  lower 
minorities  the  remainder  of  any  population,  or  the  units 
of  the  average  mass,   are  certain,   with  regard  to  all 
political   questions,   to  think,   feel,   and  judge  in  sub- 
stantially the  same  way ;  and  this  aspect  of  the  question 
Mr.  Chesterton's  definition  brings  into  full  prominence. 
Mr.  Chesterton,  as  we  have  seen  already,  sets  out  with 
observing  that  democracy,  if  conceived  m  terms  of  its 
ultimate   object,   is   simply   an   absolute   harmonv,   no 
matter  how  ensured,  between  the  acts  of  the  executive 
government  and  "the  general  will"  of  the  governed; 
but  he  adds  that,  in  practice,  so  far  as  largre  States  are 
concerned,  it  can  be  realised  only  through  the  agency  of 
elected  representatives,  to  whom  the  general  will  is  com- 
municated by  those  electing  them,  and  whose  sole  busi- 


12       LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 

ness  is  to  obey  it  with  abject  accuracy.     He  admits, 
however,  that  the  realisation  of  such  a  government  is  a 
feat  less  simple  than  it  seems.     Elections,  he  says,  may 
rest  on  the  widest  possible  suffrage,  and  the  result  may, 
as  ample  experience  shows,   be  not  democracy,  but  a 
kind  of  degraded  oligarchy.     For  example,  he  says,  ''  Sir 
Josiah  Gudge  is  elected  to  represent  the  radical  borough 
of  Slocum,"  but  does  Sir  Josiah,  he  asks,  represent  this 
borough  in  reality  ?     Sir  Josiah,  as  a  member  of  Parlia- 
ment, must,  he  says,  do  one  of  two  things  or  the  other. 
He   must   vote   in   accordance   with   the   will    of   the 
inhabitants  of  Slocum,  or  against  it.      If  he  does  the 
former,  he  is  acting  as  a  faithful  representative.     If  he 
does  the  latter,  he  is  not  a  representative  at  all,  but  an 
oligarch."     How  far,  then,  is  the  official  conduct  of  the 
typical  Sir  Josiah  of  to-day  really  determined  by  any 
instructions  which  the  inhabitants  of  Slocum  have  dic- 
tated to  him?     The  inhabitants,  says  Mr.  Chesterton, 
will  really  have  dictated  nothing.     Sir  Josiah  will  have 
come  to  them  with  a  programme  of  measures  already 
formulated ;  his  opponent  will  have  come  to  them  with 
another ;  and  all  that  the  inhabitants  will  have  had  any 
chance  of  doing  will  have  been  that  of  making  through 
the  ballot-box  a  Hobson's  choice  between  them.     Such 
a  method  of  government  is  certainly  not  democratic; 
and  yet,  says  Mr.  Chesterton,  it  is  the  method  which,  as 
modern  experience  shows,  has  thus  far  emerged  invari- 
ably from  the  most  elaborately  democratic  institutions. 
What,  then,  is  the  explanation  of  this  practical  paradox  ? 
The  explanation,   says  Mr.   Chesterton,  is  as  follows: 
Both   the    primary   essentials    of    pure    democracy    are 
present— the  general  will,  like  a  great  toothed  driving- 
wheel  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  executive  body,  like  a 
small  wheel,  on  the  other;  but  in  all  democratic  constitu- 
tions which  have  thus  far  been  elaborated,  the  mechan- 
ism connecting  the  two  has  always  been  defective  in  some 
way  which  prevents  the  former,  except  on  rare  occasions, 
from  imposing  its  own  movements  on  the  latter,  thus 
leaving  those  of  the  former  for  the  most  part  quite 
inoperative.     Hence  the  only  difficulty  in  the  way  of 
rendering  democracy  complete  is,  says  Mr.  Chesterton, 
altogether  mechanical.     It  has  no  connection  with  the 


h 


BRIBERY  AND  EXTERNAL  INFLUENCE  13 

nature  of  the  democratic  principle  itself;  and  the  task 
of  surmounting  it,  though  not  altogether  simple,  needs 
only  a  few  experiments  and  a  little  ingenuity  for  its 
accomplishment.  ^ 

Mr.    Chesterton's    explanation    of    a    difficulty    thus 
emphasised  by  himself  is  interesting  because,  by  its  can- 

?hP  H^L  '^rf'  L^^^^^^  ^^^  '^  ^^  ^^^^y  place  but 

the  right  one.     The  fundamental  difficulty  does  not  lie 

1^      /act  that  the  present  machinery  for  realising  the 

f.Z?\  "^'u  \^u^f'''^'  ^*  ^'^'  ^^  the  fact  that  any 
general  will,  which  does  or  which  can  exist,  is  something 
widely  different  from  Mr.  Chesterton's  own  conception 
of  It,  and  from  that  which  all  modern  theories  of  pure 
democracy  postulate.  That  such  is  the  case  will  be 
obvious  if  we  only  take  the  trouble  to  analyse  this 
conception  carefully. 

There  are  three  points,  then,  as  to  which  all  democrats 
are  agreed.  One  is  that  any  will  which  can  be  called 
general  is  the  sum  of  the  judgments  of  the  units  of  the 
average  mass.  The  second  is  that  the  judgments  of  each 
unit  shall  be  represented  by  a  single  vote,  and  thus  be 
of  equal  mfluence.  The  third  is  that  the  judgments  of 
each  unit  shall,  as  represented  by  his  vote,  be  freely 
formed  by  himself,  and  shall  not,  for  governmental 
purposes,  have  been  warped  into  conformity  with  the 
judgments  of  any  other  person  or  group  of  persons, 
whether  by  bribery,  intimidation,  or  any  other  device 
of  any  kind. 

This  last  point  deserves  special  attention ;  for  if  large 
numbers  of  men,  though  their  votes  are  recorded  by 
themselves,  are  really  expressing  by  them  the  dictated 
judgments  of  others,  these  others  will,  as  has  been  said 
already,  have,  not  their  own  votes  only,  but  to  all  intents 
and  purposes  an  indefinite  number  added  to  them.  That 
such  IS  the  case  when  the  judgments  which  votes  express 
are  changed  from  what  they  otherwise  would  be  by 
brutal  and  direct  bribery,  is  a  fact  on  which  democrats 
themselves  are  the  first  persons  to  insist;  but  results 
essentially  similar  are,  as  presently  we  shall  see  in  greater 
detail,  producible  by  other  methods.  An  lago  might 
revenge  himself  on  a  faithful  Desdemona  who  had  re- 
pulsed him,  by  the  simple  process  of  bribing  an  assassin 


14      LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

to  murder  her ;  but  he  might  compass  the  same  end  by 
persuading  an  Othello  that  she  was  faithless,  and  thus 
inciting  the  husband  to  do  the  deed  on  his  own  account. 
What  money  would  do  in  the  former  case,  statement 
would  do  in  the  latter.  It  would  enable  one  man  to 
determine  the  conduct  of  a  second,  or — to  put  the  matter 
in  terms  of  political  life— to  transfer  the  control  of  the 
second  man's  vote  to  himself;  and  in  political  life,  under 
a  system  of  universal  suffrage,  the  promulgation  of  state- 
ments which  are  made  with  the  deliberate  object  of 
swaying  the  judgment  in  some  special  direction  is  one 
of  the  most  powerful  means  by  which  one  man  mav 
master  the  votes  of  many,  and  virtually  multiply  his 
own.  This  is  not  true,  it  must  be  noted,  of  the  publica- 
tion of  bare  facts,  if  these  be  stated  in  their  integrity ; 
but  whenever,  with  a  view  to  the  effect  of  it  on  the 
public  mind,  news  is  coloured  by  comment,  or  a  cal- 
culated distribution  of  emphasis,  those  responsible  for 
such  procedure  are,  in  so  far  as  they  are  successful, 
transferring  the  control  of  the  votes  of  other  men  to 
themselves.  Inconvenient  electors  were,  in  the  days  of 
Pickwick,  kept  from  the  polling-booth,  and  so  deprived 
of  their  votes,  by  "  hocussing  their  whisky,"  and  leaving 
them  drunk  in  a  barn.  Hocussing  the  facts  is  a  method 
of  the  same  character;  and  in  proportion  to  its  success 
is  no  less  incompatible  with  the  principles  of  pure 
democracy. 

No  one  could  admit  this  more  fully  than  democrats 
themselves,  as  the  violent  outcries  raised  by  them  in 
Great  Britain  and  Germany  against  official  manipulations 
of  news  in  time  of  war  have  testified.  But  let  us  sup- 
pose that  full  purity  of  voting,  in  the  sense  here  indi- 
cated, were  achieved.  Would  the  difficulties  involved 
in  the  postulates  of  pure  democracy  be  ended  ?  We 
shall,  on  the  contrary,  be  simply  brought  at  last  to  the 
ultimate  difficulty  out  of  which  all  the  others  spring. 

This  ultimate  difficulty  resides  in  the  obvious  fact, 
which  we  have  not  as  yet  considered,  that  if  the  judg- 
ment of  the  people,  or  the  units  of  the  average  mass,  are 
to  be  so  united  as  to  acquire  a  force  that  is  cumulative, 
and  thus  constitute  a  will  which  deserves  to  be  called 
"general,"  it  is  necessary  that  these  judgments  shall  be, 


SIMPLE  AND  ABSTRUSE  PROBLEMS     15 

in    all    important    respects,    identical.      The    question 
therefore,  is  whether  or  how  far,  with  regard  toTov^n^ 
mental  matters,  all  average  men  are,  if  left  to^  them- 

S  i^Th^'""  ^'  ""^'^  ^'^'^y  *^  j^^^^'  ^^d  therefore  To 
H^^itin  ^^  Tu^  way,  simply  because  none  of  them  are 
S  pvpI  h  1^  conspicuous  incapacity  on  the  one  hand, 
ZuZ  i^  *^^  rudiments  of  conspicuous  talent  on  the 
JhZ  tV  ^""'ir  *^''  question  in  a  few  words  is  impos- 
sibie.     The  matters  with  which  governments  have  to 

rplirn't  ""^''T'  ^"iK^^  ^^  '^^^^  '^^>  it  is  only  with 
regard  to  certain  of  them  that  any  general  will  of  a 
spontaneous  kind  is  possible.  ^ 

Let  us  begin  with  taking  two  simple  examples  of 
governmental  action,  with  regard  to  one  of  which  all 
men  do,  as  a  fact,  spontaneously  judge  alike-  whilst 
with  regard  to  the  other,  the  spoLU^us  judgments  o^ 
most  men-even  men  of  considerable  capacity-are  a 
blank.  Our  first  example  shall  relate  to  protection  from 
murder;  our  second  to  the  question  of  bi-metallism. 
RrP  p/^?;  r^""  murderers  themselves,  so  long  as  they 
are  left  at  large,  desire  that  the  Government,  by  laws 
and  the  maintenance  of  an  adequate  police,  should 
minimise  the  risks  which  any  citizen  runs  of  being  stuck 
^?rnn  M  ^^^^,!^^  ^s  asleep  or  enjoying  an  evening 
stroll.     No  prompting,  no  agitation,  no  bribery  is  needed 

thinkilT^   ^''^''  stupidest   citizen    to   this    way   of 

r.^^'u  If  "^.,f  PPOf  that  the  question  with  regard  to 
which  the  will  of  the  average  mass  is  consulted  is  the 
question  of  whether  the  system  of  mono-metallism,  as  at 
present  established,  shall  be  maintained  or  shall  be 
niodified  by  what  is  called  ^*the  remonetisation  of 
Sliver.  Here  is  a  question  the  answer  to  which,  accord- 
ing as  It  was  yes  or  no,  might  very  appreciably  affect 
the  well-being  of  everybody;  but  if  it  were  put  by  any 
member  of  Parliament  to  each  of  the  voters  who  elected 
him,  the  answer  of  all  but  a  few  of  them,  if  they  spoke 
their  minds,  would  be  this:  "The  question  of  the  re- 
spective  merits  of  mono-metallism  and  bi-metallism  is 
a  remarkably  difficult  and,  we  may  add,  a  remarkably 
dry  one.  We  know  nothing  about  it  ourselves,  and  the 
most  eminent  experts  disagree.     You,  however,  though 


M 


16      LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

you  only  muddle  us  when  you  talk  about  it,  presumably 
know  more  than  we  do,  or  else  you  are  not  worth  your 
salt.  So  do  not  worry  us  about  our  judgments.  Make 
the  best  use  you  can  of  your  own."  Mr.  Chesterton  lays 
it  down  with  an  air  of  blunt  finality  that  a  representative 
must  always  do  one  or  other  of  two  things — "that  he 
must  vote  either  in  accordance  with  the  will  of  his  con- 
stituents or  against  it."  It  does  not  occur  to  this  often 
very  sensible  writer  that  there  is  yet  a  third  alternative 
— which  is,  with  regard  to  many  questions,  the  only  one 
ever  realised — that  the  constituents  may  have  no  definite 
will  at  all. 

These  two  illustrations  show  clearly  enough  what,  if 
considered  broadly,  the  state  of  the  case  is.  They  show 
us  that  a  will  of  the  kind  which  pure  democracy  postu- 
lates is,  with  regard  to  certain  questions,  a  permanent, 
a  familiar,  and  a  completely  realised  fact;  while  they 
show  that,  in  contrast  to  such  questions,  others  exist 
also  with  regard  to  which  such  a  will  is  so  completely 
a  myth  that  it  has  in  the  world  of  realities  no  possible 
counterpart.  It  is  evident,  therefore,  that  the  postulate 
of  a  general  will  in  politics  can,  if  we  are  to  accept  it  as 
more  than  an  idle  and  academic  dream,  be  so  accepted 
only  with  important  and  specific  limitations.  Let  us 
now  take  a  bird's-eye  view  of  governmental  questions 
as  a  whole,  dividing  them  into  groups,  according  to  the 
degree  of  completeness,  or  of  incompleteness  down  to 
the  point  of  nullity,  in  which  such  a  general  will  as  pure 
democracy  postulates  either  does  exist,  or  can  possibly 
exist,  with  regard  to  them. 

We  shall  find  that,  roughly  and  for  the  purposes  of  the 
present  discussion,  political  questions  are  divisible  into 
four  groups  as  follows : 

(1)  Fundamental,  simple  and  unaltering  questions; 

(2)  Momentary  and  simple  questions ; 

(3)  Temperamental  questions; 

(4)  Composite  questions,  or  questions  which,  though 
not  momentary,  are  constantly  presenting  themselves  in 
practically  new  forms,  and  which,  though  varying  in 
complexity,  are  all  of  them  far  from  simple,  whilst 
certain  of  them  constitute  a  sub-group  meriting  the 
designation  of  Abstruse. 


■1 


POLITICAL  PROBLEMS  CLASSIFIED    17 

th?p*''^f  four  groups  of  questions  the  first  and  fourth— 
the  Fundamental  and  the  Composite-are  normX  the 
most  important.     We  will,  therefore,   beg"n  wfth  dis 
posmg  of  the  intermediate  two,  before  turninTfn  thZ 
others   which  will  be  the  main  subS  of  our"Zcussioi 
i,  ?n  **Tint*7  questions,  the  most  striking  exampk 
IS  one  which  relates  to  war.     It  has  nothing  to  do  with 
the  conduct  of  war  itself  or  the  kinds  of  DreoarationTnH 
action  on  which  its  success  depends.     Itffio  d^ofe^y 
shaS  be  uZlrZ  "^  whether  war  on  a  given  occasTon 
fnhabitantTof  cni  "  "'  "*'•     ^\^^'^i^in  occasions  the 
bv  thJ  hJL         ™^  one  country  become  so  exasperated 
by  the  behaviour  and  the  menaces  of  another  that  all 
conflicting  judgments  as  to  the  complex  facts  of  the 
situation  give  place  to  a  common  passion,  and  there  is 
thus  developed  a  cumulative  will  to  fight  the  force  of 
which  IS  a  mu  tiple  of  individual  wills^formed  bv  the 
citizens  severally  "in  virtue  of  their  manhood  alone  " 
But  a  general  will  of  this  kind,  however  vast  its  effects 
on  the  course  of  human  history,  is  in  itself  short-lived 
not  outlasting  the  crisis  whieh'^called  it  forth    and    as 
such  crises  are  happily  rare,  it  is  exceptional      It  is  not 
a  characteristic  of  the  normal  life  of  nations!' 
As  examples  of  the  questions  here  called  Temoera- 

J«  ^h"",-  ""r  '^^^  '^""'^  '•^l^«"g  to  the  consumptTon 
of  alcoholic  liquors  and  those  into  which  a  religious 

element  enters  Such  questions,  so  far  as  the  possibmtv 
of  any  general  will  is  concerned,  not  only  differ  fS 

tiaHv  ITr^r"^  T  -^".T  '"°'"^»t«ry  crisis  but  are  esse™ 
tially  and  diametrically  opposed  to  them.  With  regard 
to  Temperamenta  questions,  the  units  of  the  avefage 
mass  not  only  fail  to  arrive  at  judgments  which  evfn 
approach  Identity,  but  they  form  and  mainta  n  judg° 

mS.  Wh  ^'"  »"tonti«na»y  and  even  violently^con- 
flicting.  Who  can  contend  that  all  average  men  simnlv 
because  they  are  neither  illustrious  thinkerT  nor  fools! 
will  feel  and  judge  alike  as  to  the  drinking  of  beer  or 

one  kind  of  government  is  a  very  different  thing  from  governing 


* 


18      LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

spirits  ?    Some  of  them  will  be  for  free  drinking,  some 
of  them  for  regulated  drinking,  some  of  them  for  pro- 
hibiting  the   drinking   of   alcoholic   liquors   altogether. 
They  will  judge  and  feel  differently,  not  because  their 
intellects  are  unequal,  but  because  their  temperaments 
and  prepossessions  are  diverse.     The  same  observation 
holds  good  of  the  judgments  of  average  men  as  to  ques- 
tions connected  with  religion.     Many  Socialists  are  at 
great  pains  to  explain  that  a  man's  religion,  in  any 
reasonable  polity,  has  no  more  to  do  with  government 
than  the  colour  of  his  hair  or  trousers;  and  so  far  as 
religion  is  merely  an  inward  conviction  this  is  no  doubt 
true.     But  if  in  any  country,  whilst  masses  of  men  are 
atheists,  others  are  sincere  Christians,  and  if  the  religion 
of  the  latter  has  any  effect  on  their  lives,  there  are  two 
sets  of  questions  at  all  events  in  which  religion  is  closely 
implicated,  and  which  Government  must  deal  with  in 
one  way  or  another.     These  are  questions  relating  to 
education  and  marriage;  and  it  is  obvious  that,  as  to 
any  legislation  by  which  these  two  questions  are  affected, 
any  million  of  convinced  Christians  will  spontaneously 
differ  in  opinion  from  any  million  of  similarly  capable 
atheists.     In  the  case,  then,  of  all  those  questions  here 
called  Temperamental  the  postulate  of  pure  democracy, 
that  all  men  of  average  intelligence  will,  as  to  questions 
of  government,  come  to  the  same  conclusions,  is  so  abso- 
lutely contradicted  by  fact  that  it  would  not  be  worth 
while  to  discuss  it,  if  it  were  not  one  of  the  implications 
of  much  popular  argument.^ 

Thus,  if  we  set  aside  Momentary  questions  because 
with  regard  to  these,  though  a  general  will  is  possible, 
it  is  possible  only  on  signally  rare  occasions ;  and  if  we 
set  aside  Temperamental  questions  because,  with  regard 
to  these,  average  men,  as  such,  have  no  natural  pro- 
clivity to  will  in  the  same  way,  or  join  together  in 

»  Amongst  Temperamental  questions  must  be  included  those  into 
which  the  racial  element  enters,  such  as  those  involved  in  the  relation 
of  Ireland  to  the  United  Kingdom,  and  Ulster  to  the  rest  of  Ireland. 
Even  in  Ulster  itself  there  is  a  Catholic  will  and  a  Protestant.  Of 
divergencies  in  popular  opinion  which  are  due  to  racial  temperament, 
examples  on  a  still  larger  scale  have  been  provided  by  the  United  Statet 
in  connection  with  the  European  war. 


POLITICAL  PROBLEMS  CLASSIFIED     19 

developing  any  general  will  at  all,  it  is  with  the  Funda- 
mental questions  and  the  Composite  questions  that  we 
are  here  mamly  concerned;  and  we  shall  see  that,  if 
regarded  as  the  subjects  of  a  general  will  of  any  kind, 
the  difference  between  these  last,  though  mainly  one  of 
degree,  is  practically  so  profound  that,  whilst  a  purely 
democratic  will  is  a  reality  with  regard  to  the  former  it 
IS,  from  the  nature  of  things,  with  regard  to  the  latter 
impossible. 


CHAPTER   II 

OLIGARCHY   AND   WILL-FORMATION 

Of  Fundamental  questions  an  example  has  been  given 
already — namely  that  of  protection  from  murder;  and 
to  this  may  be  added  the  protection  of  chattels  from 
theft,  the  protection  of  the  home  from  intrusion,  and  the 
fulfilment  of  contracts  in  accordance  with  terms  specified. 
Such  questions  are  Fundamental  because  they  relate  to 
the  maintenance  of  certain  primary  conditions  in  the 
absence  of  which  no  society  could  exist. 

Now,  with  regard  to  questions  such  as  these,  little 
reflection  is  necessary  to  show  us  that  in  all  societies  a 
general  will  is  present  the  correspondence  of  which  to 
the  requirements  of  pure  democracy  is  complete.     Every 
will  which  is  capable  of  being  translated  into  action  is 
related  to  two  things — a  desired  end,  and  the  means  or 
machinery  by  which  this  end  may  be  realised ;  and  in 
both  respects,  so  far  as  Fundamental  questions  are  con- 
cerned, the  completeness  of  the  general  will  is  an  obvious 
and  universal  fact.     In  the  first  place  as  to  ends,  the 
individual  judgments  of  which  such  a  will  is  the  sum  are 
the  same  for  the  simple  reason  that  all  men,  as  to  ends 
like  these,  naturally  feel  or  think  in  precisely  the  same 
way.     No  man,  however  stupid,  requires  to  be  persuaded 
by  a  neighbour,  or  an  oligarchy  of  superior  persons,  that 
the  Government  should  protect  him  from  the  chances 
of  being  murdered  any  night  in  his  bed,  or  of  having  his 
teaspoons  stolen  before  he  comes  down  to  breakfast.     In 
the  second  place,  the  means  by  which  ends  of  this  kind 
are  to  be  achieved  are,  in  their  main  features,  as  familiar 
as  the  ends  themselves.     They  consist  of  some  system 
of  police,  law-courts,  and  penalties,  with  which,  though 
its  minor  details  vary  with  place  and  circumstance,  all 
men,  in  respect  of  its  essentials,  have  been  acquainted 

20 


1 


PRIMITIVE  DEMOCRACY 


21 


smce  the  dawn  of  history.  Here,  therefore,  there  is  a 
general  \vill  as  to  means  which  is  no  less  spontaneous 
and  unanmious  and  hardly  less  specific,  than  the  general 
win  with  regard  to  ends  which  accompanies  it. 

That  such  is  the  case  is  sufficiently  obvious  from  the 
fact  that,  whenever  Governments  are  too  weak  to  accom- 
p  ish  these  ends  efficiently,  every  man  seeks  to  accom- 
plish them  as  best  he  can  for  himself.  Thus  on  a 
well-known  occasion  a  prominent  English  Socialist  was 
attacked  by  a  man  in  Paris  who  attempted  to  steal  his 
watch.  No  police  being  present,  the  Socialist  very 
rightly  knocked  his  assailant  down.  If  the  then  Govern- 
ment of  France  had  but  given  effect  to  the  general  will 
completely,  it  would  merely  with  the  arm  of  the  law 
have  done  what  the  alien  democrat  did  instinctively  with 
his  own.  "^ 

Let  us  now  pass  on  to  the  questions  here  called  Com- 
posite, which  comprise  in  normal  times  the  whole  of  the 
subject-matter  of  political  government  in  so  far  as 
political  government  has  any  history  at  all,  or  suggests 
any  controversy  as  to  the  will,  democratic  or  otherwise, 
by  which  its  actions  are,  or  by  which  they  ought  to  be 
determined. 

Composite  questions  differ  from  Fundamental  ques- 
tions m  the  fact  that  they  are  far  more  complex,  and  at 
the  same  time  are  always  changing.     With  regard  to 
Fundamental  questions,  the  will  of  the  units  governed 
except  when  it  takes  the  form  of  a  protest  against  ineffi- 
cient administration,  is  simply  a  standing  demand,  not 
requiring  to  be  reaffirmed,  for  the  effective  maintenance 
of  a  routine  already  established.     As  to  composite  ques- 
tions,   the    case    is    essentially    otherwise.      Composite 
questions  have  their  root  in  Fundamental  questions,  and 
up  to  a  point  coincide  with  them;  but  they  represent 
such  questions  as  multiplied,  complicated,   combined, 
and  recombined,  by  the  evolution  of  new  circumstances, 
such  as  new  industrial  methods,  increases  in  wealth  and 
population,  and  the  growth  of  commercial  relationships 
between  one  country  and  another.     Thus,  whereas  in 
societies  which  are  small,  isolated,  and  stationary  Funda- 
mental questions  of  government  are  practically  the  only 
questions,  the  questions  as  to  which  alone  in  the  great 


22       LIMITS   OF   PURE  DEMOCRACY 

States  of  to-day  the  Government  requires  any  positive 
guidance,  either  from  the  brains  of  the  governed  or  from 
those  of  the  executive  itself,  are  questions  m  respect 
of  which  the  ends  to  be  achieved  are  novel,  whilst  the 
means  present  themselves  in  the  form  of  many  untried 
alternatives,  each  of  which  requires  to  be  very  carefully 
devised,  for  and  against  each  of  which  there  are  many 
things  to  be  said,  and  from  which  it  is  impossible  for 
anybody  to  select  the  best  except  by  the  use  of  a  keen 
and  balanced  intellect,  corroborated  by  vigour  of 
character,  and  acting  on  wide  knowledge. 

Of  the  growth,  as  just  described,  of  Fundamental  ques- 
tions into  Composite,  we  may  take  from  English  history 
the  following  four  examples  : -The  ^'^^^}y'\''\^^^^^ 
tribution  of  Parliamentary  seats  prior  to  the  first  Reform 
Bill ;  the  question  of  Free  Trade  versus  Protection ;  the 
question  of  the  Right  to  Work ;  and  a  fourth,  which  shall 
be  specified  presently.  , 

To  all  who  acquiesce  in  the  system  of  government  by 
elected  legislators  it  is  obvious  that,  whatever  be  the 
qualifications  on  which  the  right  to  a  vote  depends,  there 
must  locrically  at  all  events  be  some  approach  to  equality 
in  the  number  of  voters  or  citizens  for  whom  each  repre- 
sentative speaks ;  and  if  the  number  and  distribution  of 
a  population  alwavs  remained  the  same,  the  question 
of  "the  distribution  of  seats,"  if  settled  satisfactorily 
once,  would  be  settled  for  all  time.     Now,  when  George 
III  succeeded  to  the  throne  of  England,  the  then  dis- 
tribution of  seats,  if  not  ideally  perfect    was  not  obtru- 
sively at  variance  with  the  size  and  distribution  of  the 
constituencies.     Hence,  if  number  and  distribution  of 
the  population  of  England  had  never  since  then  changed, 
a  distribution  of  seats  which  satisfied  the  men  of  the 
eicrhteenth  century  would  have  satisfied  the  men  of  the 
next  century  also.     As  a  matter  of  ^act,  however,  be- 
tween the  accession  of  George  III  and  his  death  the 
population  of  England  had  not  only  so  increased,  but 
its  distribution  also  had  altered  in  so  rapid  and  extra- 
ordinary a  wav  that,  whilst  huge  towns  in  the  north 
were  represented  by  no  member  at  all,  there  were  two 
members  in  the  south  for  three  men  and  a  hay-stack. 
Here  is  one  case  in  which  it  is  easy  to  understand  how 


DEMOCRACY  AND  COMPLEX  PROBLEMS  23 

an  old  question,  taken  for  a  time  as  settled,  may  become 
a  new  one,  and  one,  as  we  shall  see  presently,  which 
required  a  solution  involving  many  new  complexities. 

The  question  of  Free  Trade  versus  Protection,  as  it 
finally  shaped  itself  in  England  at  the  beginning  of  the 
Victorian  epoch,  will  be  readily  recognised  as  one  of 
similar  character.  The  main  issue  involved  related  to 
national  food  supply — more  especially  to  the  supply  of 
bread,  and  came  to  be  known  as  the  question  of  "the 
big  and  the  little  loaf."  Here  we  have  a  question  as  old 
as  the  days  of  Jacob.  But  in  Georgian  England  it  was 
absent  till  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century,  for  Eng- 
land till  then,  so  far  as  corn  was  concerned,  was  not  an 
importing — on  the  contrary  she  was  an  exporting — 
country,  and  there  was  no  staple  food  on  which  a  pro- 
tective tax  could  fall.  Owing  to  the  subsequent  growth 
of  the  population,  coupled  with  other  changes,  this  ques- 
tion which  till  then  meant  nothing  for  the  public  con- 
sciousness, formed  fifty  years  later  the  subject  of  the 
bitterest  non-military  conflict  which  had  ever  agitated 
the  nation  in  the  whole  course  of  its  history. 

The  question  commonly  indicated  by  the  phrase  "The 
Right  to  Work  "  is  one  which  has  always  been  latent  in 
all  coherent  polities ;  but  in  primitive  times  it  was  simple, 
and  carried  with  it  its  own  solution.  In  the  case  of 
populations  which  were  stationary,  and  drew  most  of 
their  wealth  from  agriculture  or  from  pasture,  or  from 
both,  it  did  not  emerge  into  a  practical  form  at  all ;  for 
a  territory  which  had  provided  each  man  out  of  a 
thousand  with  enough  for  his  wants  in  one  age  would 
continue  to  do  so  in  another.  Or,  again,  in  primitive 
times,  when  the  earth  was  sparsely  occupied,  if  a  given 
population  increased,  it  had  merely  to  enlarge  its  borders, 
or  else,  like  the  Scythian  nomads,  move  in  a  body  from 
one  territory  to  another.  And,  indeed,  in  countries  such 
as  Canada  and  Australia  such  a  solution  is  theoretically 
adequate  to-day.  But  the  question  as  it  presents  itself 
in  modern,  especially  in  Western  Europe,  and  has  already 
begun  to  present  itself  in  the  United  States,  is  novel  and 
far  more  complex,  and  it  is  so  for  two  main  reasons.  In 
the  first  place,  in  some  of  these  countries  the  whole  of 
the  fruitful  area  is  by  this  time  occupied  already,  whilst 


24       LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

in  others  the  unoccupied  portion  is  very  rapidly  con- 
tracting. In  the  second  place,  work  itself,  which  was 
primitively  of  a  few  kinds  only,  is  now  divided  into 
kinds  so  numerous  and  so  diverse  in  character  that  dif- 
ferent men,  in  demanding  that  work  should  be  found  for 
them,  are  not  demanding  productive  work  of  any  kind, 
but  each  is  demanding  some  special  kind  out  of  many. 

Let  us  now  take  our  fourth  example.  This  shall  be 
the  question  of  providing  a  kind  of  gun  by  which  German 
airships  may  be  destroyed  on  their  way  to  London.  Here 
we  have  a  question  which,  in  respect  of  its  general  char- 
acter, was  present  and  vital  in  the  first  cluster  of  huts 
which  was  ever  threatened  by  the  ferocity  of  any  hostile 
tribe.  Like  all  practical  questions,  it  is  a  question  of 
ends  and  means.  With  regard  to  ends,  to-day  as  in 
the  earliest  times,  we  have  a  general  will  of  an  absolutely 
democratic  character;  for  all  men  are  equally  anxious 
"in  virtue  of  their  manhood  alone  "  that  the  roofs  and 
the  walls  that  shelter  them  shall  not  be  burnt  or  shat- 
tered; and  in  primitive  times,  when  men  had  no  other 
weapons  than  stones,  sticks,  firebrands,  and  their  naked 
fists,  there  was  a  will  equally  democratic  with  regard 
to  the  means  also.  In  other  words,  the  will  of  a  tribe 
to  protect  itself  comprised  a  similar  will  in  respect  of  the 
w^eapons  to  be  used.  But,  as  weapons  of  war  became 
gradually  more  complex  and  various  the  will  as  to  means 
and  the  v/ill  as  to  ends  became  separated.  So  far  as  ends 
are  concerned,  the  average  Londoner  of  to-day,  in  willing 
that  his  home  shall  be  guarded  from  German  aircraft, 
wills  precisely  what  the  savage  wills  in  some  primeval 
kraal ;  but  the  question  of  the  means  by  which  aircraft 
may  be  driven  off  or  destroyed  calls,  as  we  shall  see 
presently,  for  a  will  profoundly  different  from  that  by 
which  the  average  savage  is  actuated  when,  equipped 
only  with  the  familiar  arms  of  his  ancestors,  he  cracks 
the  skull  of  another  with  a  club  or  with  a  slung  pebble. 

These  four  illustrations  are  sufficiently  indicative  of 
the  manner  in  which  questions,  in  themselves  Funda- 
mental and  permanent,  exfoliate  under  new  circum- 
stances into  Composite  questions  which  are  new,  and 
each  of  which,  as  it  arises,  must  be  the  subject-matter 
of  a  new  will.     Let  us,  then,  consider  how  far  a  will  of 


4 


OLIGARCHY  AND  POPULAR  MEASURES  25 

that  purely  democratic  kind,  which  is  with  regard  to 
i^undamental  questions  an  actually  existing  fact,  is 
capable  of  reproducing  itself  in  relation  to  Composite 
questions  likewise. 

Stated  in  a  general  way,  what  we  shall  see  is  this,  that 
in  all  countries  possessing  what  is  commonly  called  a 
Constitution  the  action  of  the  Government  must  reflect 
a  general  will  of  some  kind  :  and  that  this  will  is  the 
sum  of  a  multitude  of  judgments  which  are  all  in  sub- 
stance identical ;  but  that  their  identity  is  due  to  the 
fact  that,  even  if  they  are  spontaneously  recorded,  they 
are,  in  respect  of  Composite  questions,  not  spontaneouslv 
formed.  ^ 

Let  us  turn  again  to  the  question  of  the  distribution 
of  Parliamentary  seats  in  England  as  it  forced  itself 
on  public  attention  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth 
century.     The  scheme  of  distribution  which  that  century 
had  inherited  from  the  past  was  already  so  widely  at 
variance  with  the  logical   object  of  all  representative 
government  that  its  anomalies  were  patent  to  the  least 
mtelligent  man  who  was  sufficiently  interested  in  the 
subject  to  consider  it  worth  a  thought.     Long  before  the 
first  Reform  Bill,  though  numbers  remained  apathetic, 
an  opinion   was   widely  prevalent   which,   as   a   vague 
criticism  of  abuses  and  a  vague  demand  for  their  aboli- 
tion, was,  so  far  as  it  went,  of  a  genuinely  democratic 
character.      But   if   each   of   the   units   by   whom   this 
opinion  was  held  had  been  invited  to  explain  in  writing 
what  representation,  if  proportional  in  any  true  sense, 
would  be,  most  of  them  could  have  formulated  no  series 
of  intelligible  answers  at  all;  and  their  answers  taken 
together  would  certainly  have  resulted  in  nothing  which 
a  statesman  could  construe  into  a  series  of  specific  and 
practicable  orders. 

The  history  of  the  popular  will  in  England,  in  so  far 
as  It  reflected  itself  in  the  passing  of  the  first  Reform 
Bill,  IS  the  history  of  a  judgment  which  was  in  its 
first  stage  the  sum  of  individual  judgments  sponta- 
neously formed  and  identical,  but  at  the  same  time 
vaorue,  and  for  practical  purposes  futile,  and  which  was 
gradually  by  the  influence  of  certain  super-energetic 
minorities  endowed  with  a  force  and  unity  of  which  it 


26       LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 

was   itself  incapable.      This  process   was  of  a   double 
nature.     It  was,  firstly,  a  process  of  raising  a  vague 
opinion  from  a  temperature  of  lukewarm  protest  to  a 
temperature  at  which,  like  scraps  of  lead  in  a  ladle,  indi- 
vidual opinions  are  fused  into  a  common  passion.     It 
was,  secondly,  a  process  of  forcing  this  fluid  mass  to 
run  itself  into  various  moulds  which  minorities  of  active 
men  had  deliberately  prepared  for  its  reception.     Both 
these  processes,  whose  spectacular  aspects  are  familiar 
to  readers  of  history,  took  the  form  of  resolutions  passed 
at  meetings,  of  quasi-military  marches  or  riots,  and  of 
monster  petitions   weighted   with  miles   of  signatures. 
But  though  each  of  these  phenomena  seemed  to  be  purely 
popular,  each  as  its  active  principle  always  had  some 
one  man,  or  small  cluster  of  men,  exceptional  in  point  of 
energy,  exceptional  in  powers  of  persuasion,  and  excep- 
tional for  the  most  part  in  mental  alertness  also,  by  sub- 
mitting themselves  to  whom  (and  by  this  means  only) 
the  masses  acquired  a  unity  and  a  temporary  precision 
of  thought,  without  which  they  would  have  been  power- 
less for  any  definite  purpose.     Indeed,  the  meetings  and 
the  marches  and  the  riots  were,  if  considered  psycho- 
logically, monster  petitions  changed  into  other  forms- 
petitions  of  which  the  definite  substance  was  the  work 
of  a  leading  few,  whilst  the  miles  of  signatures  were  the 
mere  Amens  of  the  multitude.     If  the  substance  had 
been  withdrawn,  the  meaning  of  the  signatures  would 
have  disappeared,  as  a  Reform  meeting  in  London  melted 
away  at  once  when  Hunt,   the  principal   orator,   was 
frightened  from  his  platform  by  a  bullet  through  his 
celebrated  white  hat. 

The  question  of  Free  Trade  versus  Protection,  and  the 
triumph  in  Great  Britain  of  the  former  over  the  latter, 
which  was  one  of  the  main  events  of  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  constitute  a  case  whose  essentials 
are  precisely  similar.  Here  again  the  principle  involved 
is  one  of  extreme  simplicity— that  a  Government  ought, 
so  far  as  a  Government  can  affect  the  matter,  to  secure 
for  the  masses  the  largest  and  cheapest  supply  which 
under  given  conditions  is  possible  of  food,  and  more 
particularly  of  bread.  The  question,  moreover,  at  that 
particular  time  had  been  simplified  to  an  unusual  degree 


THE   RIGHT  TO   WORK 


27 


by  a  long  experience  of  the  evils  of  very  ill-devised  corn- 
laws.  And  yet  it  required  the  tireless  and  protracted 
efforts  of  a  specially  gifted  minority,  which  had  Bright 
and  Cobden  for  its  heroes,  their  organising  powers,  their 
powers  of  argument  and  presentation,  and  their  sanguine 
prophecies,  many  of  which  were  totally  falsified  by 
events,  to  fashion  out  of  a  vague  opinion,  however  spon- 
taneous in  itself,  a  cumulative  will  sufficiently  precise 
and  vehement  to  overbear  all  obstacles  and  accomplish 
the  end  desired. 

Let  us  now  turn  to  the  question  of  the  Right  to  Work. 
If  in  great  modern  States  this  were  really  as  simple  to- 
day as  many  foolish  persons  imagine  it,  and  as  in  primi- 
tive times  it  was,  everybody  would  will  that  the  general 
right  to  work  should  be  admitted  by  the  Government, 
and  secured  by  means  as  simple  as  those  by  which  it 
secures  each  citizen's  right  to  live.  "  For  if,"  said  Louis 
Blanc,  "a  Government  is  bound  to  protect  life,  it  is 
bound  to  secure  the  means  by  which  men  can  be  kept 
alive."  But,  as  Mill  observes,  this  principle,  though 
simple  enough  in  the  abstract,  presents  itself  in  modern 
States  as  one  of  extreme  complexity ;  for,  if  a  Govern- 
ment is  bound  to  find  work  for  all  the  units  of  a  given 
population,  it  can  do  so  only  on  condition  that  it  is 
empowered  to  control  their  numbers.  Would  such  con- 
trol be  possible?  If  possible,  are  there  any  means 
by  which  it  would  be  rendered  tolerable  ?  Here  we  have 
a  host  of  difficulties  emerging  from  the  very  roots  of  life, 
like  wasps  from  a  disturbed  nest,  and  provoking  most 
men  merely  to  beat  them  off,  or  else  to  upset  one  another 
in  trying  to  run  away  from  them.  But  Mill,  in  reviewing 
this  matter,  sees  one  of  its  difficulties  only.  The  very 
idea  of  the  right  to  work  is  in  itself  ambiguous.  It  may 
mean  the  right  of  every  man  to  have  work  found  for 
him  by  which  he  can  gain  a  living,  either  within  the 
limits  of  a  certain  geographical  area,  or  else  to  have  it 
found  for  him  on  the  surface  of  the  earth  somewhere. 
Early  in  the  nineteenth  century  the  inhabitants  of  the 
Tyree — one  of  the  Hebridean  islands — were  largely  main- 
tained by  the  manufacture  of  certain  chemicals  obtained 
by  burning  a  peculiar  kind  of  seaweed.  This  industry 
was  destroyed  by  the  triumph  of  Free  Trade  principles, 


28       LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

and  the  consequent  admission  to  Great  Britain  of  these 
chemicals  from  abroad;  some  three-fourths  of  the 
islanders  being  in  this  way  deprived  of  their  main 
means  of  sustenance.  Had  these  persons  claimed  from 
the  Government  the  right  to  have  work  found  for 
them,  what  would  this  claim  have  meant  ? — that  such 
work  was  to  be  found  for  them  within  the  coastline  of 
their  native  islet,  or  that  it  was  to  be  found  for  them 
somewhere  within  the  limits  of  the  British  Empire  ? 
Had  the  principle  involved  in  it  borne  the  former  mean- 
ing, it  would  have  plainly  been  as  great  an  absurdity 
as  the  principle  that  a  farmer,  on  a  limited  number 
of  acres,  is  bound  to  provide  grazing  for  a  limitless 
number  of  cows.  Had  it  meant,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  the  Government  was  bound  to  provide  work  for 
them  somewhere,  it  would  have  meant  that  the  Govern- 
ment should  be  empowered  to  determine  where ;  and 
this  could  only  have  meant  that  the  Government  should 
be  empowered  to  transport  them  to  any  spot — whether 
in  Canada,  Jamaica,  Australia,  or  the  recesses  of  British 
Africa — which  Parliament  or  a  State  Department  might 
see  fit  to  select.  Here,  then,  we  have  again  a  question 
with  regard  to  w^hich  any  number  of  answers  is  possible. 
If  any  Government  attempted  to  answer  it  practically 
by  asking  each  citizen  for  guidance  "in  virtue  of  his 
manhood  alone,"  it  would  elicit  nothing  but  a  babel  of 
conflicting  voices,  which  individually  meant  little,  and 
w^hich  cumulatively  meant  nothing.  If  any  practical 
advance  towards  a  general  and  systematic  solution  of  the 
question  of  the  right  to  work  is  ever  to  be  made — and  it 
never  has  been  made  yet — it  will  be  made  by  an  excep- 
tional few  imposing  their  own  schemes  on  the  many,  not 
by  the  many  imposing  the  scraps  of  abortive  thought, 
as  shaped  spontaneously  in  their  own  minds,  on  the  few. 
Of  our  four  typical  questions,  it  remains  for  us  to 
review  the  last — namely  the  question  which  first  arose 
during  the  great  European  war,  of  how  the  British 
Islands  should  protect  themselves  from  attack  by  in- 
vading air-craft.  No  question,  in  respect  of  the  end 
involved  in  it,  could  evoke  a  will — a  general  will — more 
purely  democratic  than  this.  The  will  of  any  one  unit 
is  spontaneously  the  same  as  the  will  of  every  other.     It 


OLIGARCHY  AND   INVENTION       29 

presents  itself  to  the  imagination  of  each  in  precisely  the 
same  picture— an  airship  in  ignominious  flight,  or  an 
airship  fallmg  down  in  flames.     But  a  will  as  to  ends, 
let  It  be  never  so  general,  is,  if  we  think  of  it  as  a  power 
which  can  definitely  guide  a  Government,  nothing  unless 
It  carries  with  it  a  will  as  to  specific  means ;  and  in  this 
most  illummating  case  it  is  sufficiently  clear  from  events 
that  the  purely  democratic  will  is  a  hopeless  and  helpless 
blank.     In  a  case  like  this,  all  that  the  units  of  the 
average  mass  can  do  is  to  cry  out  for  somebody  whose 
talents  exceed  the  average,  and  who,  presenting  them 
with  some  plan  or  mechanism  by  which  the  end  in  view 
may  be  accomplished,  ask  them  to  say  "Yes"  to  the 
proposal  that  this  mechanism  shall  be  adopted.     This 
particular  case  is  no  doubt  an  extreme  one;   but  all 
political  questions  of  the  kind  here  called  Composite- 
that  is  to  say,  all  questions  of  government  which  are 
possible  subjects  of  controversy,  and  require  that  anv 
action  of  a  novel  kind  shall  be  taken,  conform  to  this 
type  of  case  in  a  greater  or  less  degree.     In  respect  of 
such  questions  the  many  have  wills  of  some  kind,  but 
they  are   vague,   incomplete,   and,   taken   as   a   whole 
they  are  powerless,  until  the  talents  and  enercries  of  the 
few   present   them   with   specific   materials,   on   which, 
whether  by  way  of  selection,  of  acceptance,  or  of  rejec- 
tion, they  can  act.     But  even  when  matters  have  reached 
this  point,  the  necessary  functions  of  the  few  are  so  far 
from  being  ended  that  they  merely  enter  on  a  new  career 
of  activity.     What  the  nature  of  that  activity  is  we  will 
consider  in  the  following  chapter. 


•! 


CHAPTER    III 


THE   ARTS   OF   OLIGARCHY 


As  an  approach  to  the  fresh  question  which  has  just 
now  been  indicated,  let  us  continue  for  a  moment  longer 
the  use  of  our  last  illustration — namely  that  of  a  general 
will  with  regard  to  an  anti-aircraft  gun.  The  Many, 
in  merely  willing  the  use  of  some  gun  or  mechanism  by 
which  hostile  aircraft  may  be  driven  off  or  destroyed, 
but  the  nature  of  which  they  themselves  are  quite  incom- 
petent to  suggest,  are  like  passengers  trying  in  a  boat 
to  be  sick  on  an  empty  stomach ;  but  we  have  assumed 
that  when  once  a  contrivance  sufficient  for  this  end  was 
presented  to  them,  they  would  with  one  consent  all  will 
the  adoption  of  it.  This  assumption,  however,  if  we 
apply  it  to  actual  life,  is  by  no  means  so  simple  as  it 
seems.  A  contrivance  of  the  kind  in  question  would, 
from  the  nature  of  the  case,  be  novel,  and,  however 
perfect  it  might  be,  only  experts  of  very  special  capacity 
could  form,  before  it  was  tried,  any  independent  judg- 
ment with  regard  to  its  merits  whatsoever.  Indeed, 
even  Boards  of  experts  have  often  rejected  contrivances, 
subsequently  shown  to  possess  the  highest  value,  as  not 
being  worth  the  cost  of  so  much  as  a  systematic  trial. 
And  this  difficulty  is  increased  when,  as  usually  happens, 
not  one  contrivance  only  is  submitted  to  their  judgment, 
but  several.  Now  it  is  true  that  of  contrivances  such  as 
an  anti-aircraft  gun,  the  cost  of  which  is  individually  not 
enormous,  several  might  be  tried  simultaneously  or  in 
rapid  succession  before  the  occasion  for  the  use  of  them 
had  altogether  passed  away ;  and  the  Government  might 
invite  the  masses  to  record  a  general  will  that  the  type 
of  gun  should  be  adopted  which  experiment  had  shown 
to  be  the  best.  This  is  a  part  in  the  drama  which  the 
masses,  as  a  pure  democracy,  would  be  fully  competent 

30 


jyf 


HOW  OLIGARCHY  OPERATES        31 

*°  1P'•^^^i"^*T^*l*  *=?"**'^^  **  ^Psom  is  competent  to 
acclaim  the  Derby  wmner  when  it  has  won.     But  the 

questions  to  which  experiments  of  kinds  like  these  are 
applicable  form  but  a  small  part  of  those  Composite 
Questions  with  which  Governments  have  to  deal.  A 
dozen  different  guns  devised  for  the  destruction  of  Zen- 
pelms  might  be  tested  by  practice  at  so  many  floating 
targets,  ma  dozen  consecutive  days,  or  even  in  a  single 
morning ;  but  schemes  of  electoral  reform,  or  of  Protection 
or  of  Free  Trade,  can  be  tested  by  no  such  preliminary 
means  as  these.  Of  any  electoral  or  fiscal  schemes  that 
are  possible,  it  is  impossible  at  the  same  time  to  experi- 
ment with  niore  than  one;  and  the  one  which  happens 
to  be  adopted  must  be  kept  in  operation  for  years  before, 
as  an  experiment,  it  is  able  to  teach  us  anything.  Its 
adoption  must,  therefore,  be  determined  by  psychological 
processes  whose  action  precedes  the  event,  not  by  the 
results  which  follow  it. 

All  Composite  questions,  then,  as  related  to  the  will 
of  the  many,  resemble  the  question  of  defences  against 
hostile  aircraft  m  the  fact,  which  this  example  so  si|nally 
Illustrates,  that  before  the  many  can  collectively  wUl 
anything  about  them  at  all,  two  distinct  tasks  must  be 
carried  out  by  the  few.     In  the  first  place  the  question 
at  issue  must  be  invested  by  the  few  with  the  form  of 
some   definite   scheme  or  schemes,   for  otherwise   the 
judgments  of  the  many  will  have  nothing  to  act  on.     In 
the  second  place,  if  these  judgments  are  to  be  so  precise 
on  the  one  hand,  and  so  absolutely  unified  on  the  other, 
as  to  constitute  an  injunction  that  some  one  scheme  shall 
be  adopted,  the  devisers  of  this  scheme  must  so  present 
It  to  the  mass  of  average  men  that  a  judgment  in  favour 
01  Its  adoption  shall,  somehow  or  other,  develop  itself  in 
the  mind  of  each.    Further,  it  is  evident  that,  if  such 
a  consensus  of  judgment  cannot  be  elicited  beforehand 
py  short  and  sharp  experiment— a  feat  which  is  possible 
m  exceptional  cases  only— it  must  be  elicited  by  the 
arts  of  deliberate  and  systematic  persuasion. 

It  IS  in  the  practice  of  such  arts,  which  are  essentially 
tlie  arts  of  an  oligarchy,  that  at  least  one  half  of  the 
activity  of  any  Constitutional  Government,  actual  or 
possible,  consists;  and  the  more  nearly  a  Constitution 


32      LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

conforms  in  outward  semblance  to  the  principles  which 
the  theory  of  pure  democracy  postulates,  the  more 
necessary  does  the  practice  of  such  arts  become,  and  the 
more  industriously  do  statesmen  who  call  themselves 
democrats  practise  them.  Let  us  consider  this  fact 
further  in  the  light  of  well-known  examples. 

The  object  of  such  arts  may  be  briefly  restated  thus. 
Owing  to  changed  social  conditions  some  Composite 
question  arises,  such  as  that  of  providing  some  new 
military  weapon  or  some  new  fiscal  system.  Before  the 
many  can  play  any  part  in  the  matter,  some  new  weapon 
or  some  new  fiscal  system — or,  as  generally  happens, 
several — complete  in  respect  at  least  of  their  main 
details,  must  be  devised.  The  devising  of  this  or  of  these 
requires  special  abilities,  and  is  necessarily  the  work  of 
the  few.  The  many  can,  as  a  whole,  play  no  part  in  the 
matter  except  that  of  agreeing  to  pronounce  that  some 
one  device,  if  there  be  only  one,  is  satisfactory,  or,  if 
several  be  offered,  that  some  one  of  these  is  the  best. 
The  situation  of  the  many  with  regard  to  such  devices 
is  very  much  what  it  would  be  with  regard  to  a  medicine 
which  nobody  had  ever  tried,  and  the  probable  effects 
of  which  could  not  reasonably  be  anticipated  by  anybody 
otherwise  than  from  some  knowledge  of  its  chemical 
composition  and  the  action  of  chemical  substances  on 
the  tissues  of  the  human  body.  The  only  means  by 
which  in  each  of  a  countless  number  of  people,  most  of 
them  certainly  not  chemical  experts,  a  confidence  in  the 
merits  of  an  untried  medicine  could  be  elicited  would  be 
a  system  of  puffs  on  the  part  of  the  would-be  vendor. 
Now  such  puffs  or  advertisements  are  of  various  kinds 
and  grades,  but  they  all  conform  to  one  or  other  of  two 
types.  They  may  contain  some  fragments  of  vague 
scientific  information  which  even  to  the  most  ignorant 
man  is  in  a  vague  way  familiar,  and  suggests  to  him 
some  judgment  which  he  attributes  to  his  own  intelli- 
gence ;  or  else  they  may  consist  of  a  number  of  bare 
assertions,  the  efficacy  of  which  depends  on  the  art  with 
which  they  are  emphasised. 

Thus,  if  a  man  has  invented  a  compound  called 
**  Radium  Cocoa,"  he  may  commend  its  virtues  to  the 
public  in  either  or  both  of  the  two  following  ways. 


^ 


OLIGARCHIC  PERSUASION  33 

h?mlrs'J"-''  *^'  renowned  French  scientist,  has," 

Kyrd^n^oub?'.T''T^  '^f  u^^^  ^^^^  ^^  ^^dium'is 
of  Nature      Thl^  ^P^^^":^^  ^^J^e  self-renewmg  vitality 

the  v1t« nt*^  If     I^""  '^"''^  ^^^^"«^  Cocoa  are  taking 

systems  "^  Or  .r^^^'^"^^  r-^^*^  ^^  ^^*"^^  i^to  their  owf 
systems.       Or  else,  adoptmg  a  style  which  for  manv  i^ 

f"  m  iSat  TlVe'd  F  T  ^^^' .  ^t'  ^OU  so  oTtenS 

Ss^'r^nt^V  Th  ^^„^^^-- C^^^^^^^^^ 
WBest  PiH  HH  ^  f  Commons  drinks   it. 

Sn^tolSl  ^l^^^KtV^'^^^y  ^^*^^  yo^  have  been 
ton  drinks  Tt  H^^  ^"^^^"''  ^.^  ^^^^^^^^  Mews,  Clac- 
T?i?Kvi  u  /  ■^^''^  ^^^  two  pictures,  showing  Babv 
Bubbles  before  a  cup  of  Radium  Cocoa,  and  after  " 
But  whichever  method  the  advertiser  of  an  untried  com- 

be'To'  cTeTteln^Jh;''  object  of  his  advertiseSs'wm 
pe  to  create  m  the  minds  of  all  who  look  at  them  a 
similar  will  or  judgment,  which  they  would  not  and  c^uld 
not  have  formed  if  left  to  their  own  devices  And  an v 
Government  which,  in  respect  of  any  composite  or  com^ 

£eraT:ulT'a,rn"  T  ^f«"^*^  su'pport  of  a"y 
fo  bribeTv  ^n  '  ^""J"^'  '"^  '°"e  as  it  cannot  resort 
:ubstn^l^ly*LTl^n-l-h   ^  will   for  itself  in 

As  practised  by  statesmen,  whether  actually  in  ofHce 
or  struggling  for  it,  the  arts  of  eliciting  from'^ach  unH 

regardTalrcoT  l'"^"  ^"  identicaf  judgment  wfth 
us  divi,?ht^  TP'^''  measures,  are,  as  history  shows 
called  th^lrfVi^'^."'*?T*'''"^^-  O"^  «f  these  may  be 
of  PolSc«t  I  ^,°l'*''=^^  Incendiarism ;  another  the  Art 
01  Political  Stimulation ;  whilst  the  third,  which  alone 

pZC'S  v"**^^'  1**"^  ^-'^  others,'is  tl^e  Art  0I 
i-opular  Exposition,  or  the  art  of  placing  before  the 

as  to'fTnf  T-T."'^"!!  '^^^P^'^  '=«"-i'=««n  statement! 

tl  a  av.r«  J  !^-  ^^""^  ^''°  '"  '^^''^^n  *°d  marshalled 
that  average  mmds,  unconsc bus  of  external  nressure 

concluSn""^  *'"'  *°  '^'^^  *'°™  them'some'lelS 

is  S^«*ri'iT  "Jf.*"*>y  the  art  of  Political  Incendiarism 
IS  the  art  of  kindling  in  multitudes  by  loose  and  popular 
rhetoric  a  belief  that  they  are  suffering  from  some^par' 


34      LIMITS   0F_  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

ticular  grievance  for  which  some  statesman  professes  to 
have  devised  a  cure,  his  object  being  to  achieve  or  retam 
power  as  the  social  saviour  by  whom  alone  the  cure  can 
be  applied.  This  art  is  like  that  of  the  quack  American 
doctor,  of  whom  the  story  is  told  that,  when  asked  to 
cure  a  child  of  smallpox,  he  began  with  giving  it  a 
powder,  saving  to  the  parents  as  he  did  so, ''  This  powder 
will  bring  on  the  convulsions.  I'm  not  much  at  pustules, 
but  I  reckon  I'm  hell  on  fits."  . 

The  art  of  Political  Stimulation  has  for  its  object  a 
mere  overcoming  of  the  inertia  which  disinclines  a  vast 
number  of  persons,  even  when  suffering  from  conditions 
really  onerous  and  remediable,  not  only  to  think  out 
political  remedies  for  themselves,  but  even  to  accept 
with  interest  those  thought  out  by  others.  Except  for 
the  fact  that  one  of  these  arts  is  fraudulent  whilst  the 
other  is  legitimate  and  on  most  occasions  necessary,  it 
is  impossible  to  draw  any  definite  line  between  them. 
The  nature  of  both  is  very  vividly  illustrated  by  a  remark 
which  an  English  statesman  of  the  extreme  radical  school 
is  reported  to  have  addressed  to  a  friend,  who  endowed 
it  with  immortality  by  repeating  it.  "I  have  sometimes 
feared  of  late  that  my  personal  influence  was  declining. 
I  find,  however,  that  my  fears  were  groundless.  Let  me 
only  make  the  people  angry,  and  I  can  do  with  them 

what  I  please."  ,      ,    .    * -n       i 

Of  the  last  of  these  three  arts— namely  that  of  Popular 
Exposition,  or  the  art  of  creating  a  will  in  favour  of 
specific  measures,  not  by  rhetorical  statements  calculated 
to  inflame  opinion,  but  by  plying  the  public  with  facts 
which,  even  if  accurately  stated,  are  so  selected  and 
emphasised  that  the  average  mind  will  draw  from  them 
some  special  conclusion  for  itself,  signal  examples  have 
been  provided  by  various  governments  during  the  great 
European  war.  During  the  earlier  months  of  that  war 
the  German  Government  spent  more  than  £1,000,000  in 
America  with  the  object  of  manufacturing  an  opinion  by 
this  precise  method— we  may  call  it  a  campaign  of 
emphasis.  It  may  have  been,  as  is  said,  a  campaign  of 
falsehoods  also ;  but  this,  if  such  were  the  case,  is  no 
more  than  an  accident.  It  is  the  art  with  which  state- 
ments are  selected,  whether  true  in  themselves  or  no, 


OLIGARCHIC   PERSUASION  35 

and  the  concerted  emphasis  which  they  thus  acouire 

Tnd  Xv^S^I:  '^"'  r  ^^  *^^^  *^^i^  cuLlatL  e^:^^^^ 
end  desS  "'*''  ^"^  instrument  for  securing  the 

aver'S'e  me^ S  ''^  "^^^JP^^^ting  the  judgments  of 
average  men  by  systematising  the  supplv  of  facts  on 
which  judgments  are  formed  Ire  certaffly  not  what  ^s 

arrrd^o'eonH  '^  .\"^^^^'  ^^^^^^  wh'Ln  'emTssf^^^^^^ 
are   paid   to   conduct  the  process   these  methods  verv 

brTberVS^^^^^ '' '  ^'  *^'^  '''  ^^  ^'^^  incon^St  tha^ 
£  ma^^^^^^^  democratic  principle.     If  a  witness 

£v  t^d^n  Slf^.r  ""^'^1^  suppressing  facts  causes  a 
o  Ljui?  a  m.n  ll  ""^"^^  ^^'  ^^^^  ^^^^  otherwise-^ 
^uihv^  he  i.  n^  r^"^'  innocent,  or  acquit  a  man  really 
^TJiT  M  """"J^^^  interfering  with  the  natural  action 
of  others  than  he  would  be  had  he  bought  the  verS 

the  na?nrP  ^fw  ''Y''^~^  ^^'^  "^^^^^  ^^  ^^  unjust-^ 
the  nature  of  his  conduct  would  in  this  respect  be  the 

lliZ'lrJ'^^'^u''  T^"^^^^^^  ^^  the  recorded^judgments 

aescribed  as  that  of  Political  Incendiarism,  it  must  not 
be  supposed  that  these  arts  of  oligarchic  influence  are 

L  p^arTvUrT'^^."^^^^  "^^^^^  *h^y  P-""-  to 
one  party  only.     On  the  contrary,  thev  are  pomnjiHW^ 

integrity      In  any  constitutional  country  their  emolov 
ment  is  inseparable  from  statesmanship'^    In  so7r Ts" 
IS  necessary,  with  regard  to  any  Composite  question 

2laV^raW,l''''"'''r"'^  '^'  support^!  an^ 
^^„r  1    Tu  *"~*    ^'''    possess  ng    any    definite 

content-these  arts  of  manipulation  must  be  prac! 
tised  by  all  statesmen  equally.  Neither  the  wiH  of 
the  govermng  few  nor  the  will  of  the  governed  manv 

SculaTf  °"*  ^"^^  °"^^'-*^'^^''  '^^'  beco^me  so  muK 

tJlh!^  observations  are  primarily  made  with  reference 
to  the  action  of  persons  or  parties  either  actuallv  fn 

ofTb[;inLT'1^fl/°^  i*  "^^  ^  reasonlblf  pTotc" 
01  oDtaming  it.    In  all  modern  countries,  however  much 

by  sectional  bodies,  or  parties  in  a  narrower  senseTTnd 


36      LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

in  these  the  arts  of  the  few  are  not  confined  to  the  arts 
o'rre'incitation  or  persuasion,  but  are  to  a  considerab^^^ 
extent  supplemented  by  those  of  disciphne.     Sudi  sec 
tional  bodies  as  these,  which  have  no  gen^^^/^^^^^^^ 
will  be  dealt  with  in  another  chapter.     We  are  for  the 
moment  concerned  with  national  government  only ,  and 
here  we  must  proceed  to  note  that,  m  the  opmion  of 
many  persons,  absolutely  pure  democracy  may,  despite 
Si   difficulties    be   realised   by   a  constant  use   of  the 
Referendum,  or  plebiscite,  this  being  taken  to  carry  w^^^^ 
it  the  popular  right,  not  only  of  decision  ^uto   persona 
initiative  also.     The  opinion  is  specious    but  ^t  is  alto 
gether  illusory,  merely  bringing  us  back  to  oiigarcny 

under  a  new  disguise.  +u^„rYV. 

The  device  of  the  Referendum,  or  plebiscite,  though 
often  very  effective,  is  effective  only  when  the  questions 
which  form  its  subject  have  been  previously  reduced  by 
The  few  t^  the  last  state  of  real  or  seemmg  simplicity. 
Those  who  formulate  the  questions  ^o  not    indeed    give 

the  answers,  but  they  determine  ^^^h^^^^^Xv  2ne 
what  the  nature  of  the  answers  shall  be,  and  they  a  one 
make  definite  answers  possible.  A  plebiscite  might 
dS  an  answer  of  the  kind  required  to  the  question  o 
whether  the  parish  wants  a  new  pump  or  no ,  but  it 
Tertainly  could  not  do  so  if  what  each  parishioner  was 
asked  for  were  an  accurate  description  or  sketch  of 
the  pump  which  he  thought  most  suitable.  If  a  bride 
and  bridegroom,  whose  cherished  dream  was  to  visit  the 
north  of  freland,  had  been  promised  by  a  tribe  of  rela- 
?k>ns  the  costs  of  their  wedding  tour  on  condition  that 
they  asked  the  relations  what  the  course  of  their  tour 
should  be,  it  would  be  idle  for  them  to  ask  each  one  o 

a  hundred  aunts  or  cousins,  -f-^ ^l^^^'i^^^ZeS 
recollections  and  preferences  for  the  route  the  hotels 
the  excursions,  which  he  or  she  would  recommend.  They 
would  if  they  did  this  get  a  hundred  answers,  which 
would  practically  amount  to  none.  If  they  wished  to 
get  an  answer  at  once  distinct  and  general  they  would 
have  to  frame  their  question  in  a  very  different  way. 
Instead  of  saying  to  each,  "Where  do  you  wish  us  to 
to? '%tSy  might  say  to  all  at  once,  -  ShaU  we  go  to 
Hell  or  ConnaughtP'S  and  they  thus  would  elicit  an 


OLIGARCHY  AND  THE  REFERENDUM    37 

answer  which  was  not  only  clear  and  general,  but  was 
also  the  precise  answer  which  they  themselves  desired. 
When  a  plebiscite  established  the  dynasty  of  Victor 
Emmanuel,  the  question  addressed  to  each  unit  of  the 
Italian  people  was  not  "  What  kind  of  government  would 
you  wish  to  establish  if  you  could  ?  "  It  was  simply 
''Do  you  wish  that  Italy  shall  remain  what  it  is  now — 
a  collection  of  petty  States  each  afraid  of  its  neighbours, 
or  else  that  it  shall  be  a  great  kingdom  united  under  one 
great  king?"  If  each  Italian  had  been  asked  for  a 
sketch  of  whatever  government — ducal,  royal,  papal, 
federal,  republican,  or  communist — corresponded  to  his 
own  ideal,  the  plebiscite  would  have  meant  no  more  than 
a  buzz  of  quarrelling  voices  heard  through  a  single 
telephone,  instead  of  what  statesmen  were  waiting  for — 
a  clear  business-like  message  on  which  business  men 
could  act. 

Nor  would  the  situation  be  mended  by  the  popular 
right  of  initiative — the  right  of  every  citizen  "in  virtue 
of  his  manhood  alone  "  to  submit  to  the  Executive  any 
proposal  he  might  please,  and  to  claim  that  it  should — 
for  this  is  what  the  matter  comes  to — have  in  the  last 
resort  a  special  little  plebiscite  to  itself.  Such  a  right, 
no  doubt,  might  be  possibly  exercised  with  effect  by  a 
citizen  here  and  there,  and  on  very  rare  occasions ;  but 
it  could  not  be  exercised  by  all.  Were  it  exercised  by 
all,  the  life-work  of  each  adult  would  be  mainly  taken 
up  with  examining  the  vagaries  of  all  the  rest.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  it  were  exercised  by  a  few,  and  a  few  only, 
the  principle  of  oligarchy  would  be  back  again  without 
any  disguise  whatever. 

The  right  of  initiative  would  be  meaningless  even  in 
theory,  except  in  so  far  as  it  enabled  the  individual  who 
insisted  on  using  it  to  obtain  for  his  own  proposals  the 
support  of  a  considerable  number  of  other  men,  and 
cause  them  to  form  some  judgment  which  they  would 
not  have  formed  otherwise — a  process  which  is  essentially 
that  of  imposing  his  will  on  theirs.  If  we  ask  how  one 
man  would  be  able  to  do  this,  we  can  only  say  that,  if 
he  did  not  do  so  by  bribery,  he  would  have  to  do  so  by 
practising  as  a  private  individual,  and  for  some  one 
isolated  purpose,  the  essentially  oligarchic  arts  which,  as 


1 


38      LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

we  have  seen  already,  are  practised  by  leading  statesmen 
systematically  and  on  a  larger  stage. 

In  other  words,  with  regard  to  Composite  questions, 
the  pure  will  of  the  many,  unless  it  is  unified  by  the 
formative  influence  of  the  few,  is  neither  a  foolish  will 
nor  a  wise  will.  It  is  a  will  which  does  not  exist.  It 
can  only  come  into  action  and  acquire  a  definite  content 
when  the  few  have  provided  it  with  a  subject-matter  on 
which  to  act.  Hence,  in  all  advanced  states  of  society 
the  exceptional  influence  of  a  more  or  less  numerous  few 
is  absolutely  essential  to  the  operation  of  the  democratic 
principle,  and  this  fact  is  at  the  same  time  fatal  to  the 
theory  of  pure  democracy. 


} 


CHAPTER  IV 


INEXPUGNABLE   OLIGARCHY 


The  meaning  of  the  paradoxical  fact  that,  in  any  com- 
plex society,  democratic  action  would  be  impossible 
under  a  regime  of  pure  democracy,  will  be  more  clearly 
appreciated  if  we  consider  with  more  minuteness  what 
the  theory  of  pure  democracy,  when  seriously  taken, 
implies — the  theory  whose  basic  principle  expresses 
itself  in  the  common  formula  of  "One  man  one  vote," 
or  of  "  One  man  one  unit  of  influence,"  or  in  the  aphor- 
ism of  the  Abbe  Sieyes,  who  said  of  the  King  of  France 
that  his  rightful  influence  was  to  that  of  his  subjects 
exactly  in  the  ratio  of  one  to  thirty  millions. 

If  this  theory  or  principle  really  means  what  it  affects 
to  mean,  it  would,  were  it  translated  into  fact,  have  one 
very  startling  consequence.  It  would  not  only  mean 
that  a  King,  if  kings  were  permitted  to  exist,  should 
have  no  more  influence  as  a  voter  than  the  obscurest 
man  in  the  street.  It  would  also  mean  that,  if  any 
prestige  were  left  to  him,  he  should  not  use  it,  no  matter 
how  informally,  to  influence  the  votes  of  any  members 
of  his  entourage  who  respected  the  dignity  of  his  office, 
or  were  animated  by  loyalty  to  his  person.  But  the 
application  of  this  principle  would  not  be  confined  to 
kings.  It  would  apply  with  equal  strictness  to  the  men 
in  the  street  themselves.  It  would  mean  with  regard  to 
the  judgments  by  which  votes  are  determined  that  no 
one  man,  w^hatever  his  social  status,  should,  by  his 
decision  of  character  or  his  reputation  for  superior  know- 
ledge, so  sway  the  mind  of  even  a  single  companion — 
whether  a  worker  in  the  same  workshop,  or  a  frequenter 
of  the  same  eating-house — that  the  thoughts  and  votes  of 
two  men  were  determined  by  the  mind  of  one;  and  if 
such  a  condition  were  to  be  realised,  what  would  have 

39 


40      LIMITS  OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

to  happen  would  be  this.     Every  voter  would  be  bound 
:f    ■?'"^A  r!^   judgments   in   an   atmosphere   artificiallv 
sterilised  like  that  of  a  sick-room,  so  that  no  germs  of 
suggestion  should  be  able  to  attack  him  from  wTthout 
and  moculate  his  thoughts  or  feelings  with  thosrof  anv 
other  person.     If  this  regulation  were  pushed  to  its  fuH 
logical  consequences,  it  would  be  necessary  to  treat  a  1 
questions    of    politics    as    though    they    were    obscene 
r.S'  ^\^»l^^<=h  man  might  have  to^onfront  in    he 
hermitage  of  his  own  mind,  but  about  which  no  con- 
versation between  man  and  man  was  to  be  tokrated 
For  let  any  dozen  men  begin  to  discuss  politics  round  the 
hearth  of  any  village  inn,  there  will  always  be  one  or 
more  who  will    through  some  special  alertness  ahke  of 
mind  and  speech,  influence  to  some  extent  the  judgment 
of  the   larger  number;   and   the   first  faint   breath   of 
oligarchy  will  mix  itself  with  the  smoke  of  pipes   and  the 
odours  of  the  fraternal  tap-room.     Oligarchs  need  not  be 
men  distinguished  by  wealth  or  station,  or  by  any  of 
^^.^f^'^f^f^  possible  for  a  small  class  only.     The 
officials  of  a  trade  union,  who  order  a  strike  or  prohibit 
It,  may  be  oligarchs  just  as  truly  as  a  senate  of  hereditarv 

fandbrds  'Tvh  f '^  '''''^^''  P^'^'^^^  "^''^  aristocrad^ 
landlords.     When,  as  sometimes  happens,  a  number  of 

Kfn""  m"''*f  '■"^"'"  '''  °^^y  the  orders  whic^  thdr 
leading  ofhcmls  issue,  such  movements,  though  often 
described  as  outbursts  of  democracy  pure  and  simple 
are  always  found  to  have,  as  their  cause  and  nucleu^  the 

ifril^U  "'T  ^"^"'''^^  ^*^"-"8l'"S  t«  displace  the  dd,- 
and  m  all  such  cases  one  main  instrument  of  oligarchV 

uttereTbTX''  P°Tr  °*  ^P^^^^-of  speech  wiether 
Tf  tvfl.  ^  the  mouth  or  committed  to  printed  paper. 
„1?  f  "^f  f  ^  *^""dred  men  who  could  think  and  could 
understand  language,  but  who  could  themselves  neither 
utter  a  word  nor  read  it,  one  man  who  could  speak  would 
necessarily  rule  the  rest.  Only  through  him,  who  Tnter- 
preted  each  to  all,  would  any  concerted  action  on  the 
part  of  the  rest  be  possible.     All  men,  as  a  matter  of 

„i!l.^*J^''K'■'l'1^•"*^*'"^*°  •=»"  *''«  reader's  attention  to  the  freouencv 


REPRESSION   OF  OLIGARCHY        41 

fact,  are  able  to  talk  somehow,  and  consequently  take 
or  attempt  concerted  action  of  some  sort ;  but  since  some 
men  can  notoriously  talk  with  much  more  effect  than 
others,  the  mere  use  of  unrestricted  speech  inevitably 
communicates  to  a  few  certain  powers  inconsistent,  no 
matter  whether  they  are  small  or  large,  with  the  absolute 
equality  of  influence  which  pure  democracy  postulates. 

It  IS  true  that  no  democrats,  however  rigid  their  creed 
would  propose  that  for  this  reason  all  political  conversa- 
tion should  be  suppressed/  They  would  reject  such  a 
plan  as  absurd,  even  if  it  were  not  impracticable.  But 
this  does  not  show  that  it  is  not  in  strict  logic  impera- 
tively denianded  by  the  principles  of  pure  democracy. 
It  shows  that,  with  regard  to  the  affairs  of  any  complex 
policy,  these  principles  are  not  strictly  compatible  with 
the  unalterable  facts  of  life. 

But  let  this  argument  be  waived  as  merely  academic 
or  captious.     Let  us  suppose  that,  if  reasonably  inter- 
preted,  the   principles   of   even  fhe   purest   democracy 
would  not  demand  the  suppression  of  such  political  talk 
as  forms  a  natural  incident  of  ordinary  social  intercourse 
or  of  such  inequalities  of  influence  as  are  naturally  bound 
to  result  from  it.     Other  things  remain,  however,  the 
suppression  of  which  they  would  demand,  and  these,  in 
the  eyes  of  democrats,  are  very  much  more  important. 
Ihe  principles  of  pure  democracy  would,  if  applied  with 
even  the  roughest  semblance  of  logic,  suppress  all  poli- 
tical discussion  which,  emerging  from  the  conversational 
and  wholly  informal  stage,  develops  into  discussion  the 
conditions  of  which  have  been  deliberately  prearranged 

»  Since  the.se  words  were  written,  the  precise  conditions  there  suff- 
gested  as  logical  necessity  but  a  practical  impossibility,  were  actually 
realised  by  the  Cerman  Government.  In  a  London  Journal  (June  9, 
IJIO  It  ^yas  reported  that,  with  a  view  to  preventing  '^  discoura^inff 
statements  as  to  the  war,"  no  one  "of  lower  rank  than  a  member  of 
parliament  should  be  permitted  to  make  any  such  statement  to  any 
other  person  and  a  reward  was  offered  of  £150  to  anyone  who  ^^  should 

thiriff"^/'.!''  i^''  ^^  ^^''  '^^.""^^^T  *«  ^««^-"  "  ^'«lice  regulations  to 
[n  f\r  r  \  *^^J^P"rt  .continued,  '^  adorn  the  advertisement  pillars 
m  he  streets.  Nobody  ,s  safe  in  even  the  most  confidential  cmiver- 
Sdtion.  1  ure  autocracy,  m  order  to  suppress  any  general  will  or 
opinion  creates  the  very  conditions  which  pure  democracy  logically 
postulates  and  which  at  the  tame  time  prevent  the  development  of  any 


42       LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 


by  a  few  men  for  the  purpose  of  influencing  many  in  any 
special  and  calculated  way.  In  other  words,  the  prin- 
ciples of  pure  democracy,  which  demand  before  all  things 
else  that  no  one  voter  of  any  kind  shall,  so  far  as  such 
an  abuse  is  preventable,  exercise  more  than  one  unit  of 
influence,  would  suppress  everything  which  partakes  of 
the  nature  of  oratory,  under  which  heading  we  may 
include  all  incitation  or  persuasion  which  is,  with  a 
political  object,  accomplished  either  by  voice  or  litera- 
ture. Wherever  the  orator  begins  pure  democracy  ends ; 
for  if  the  aim  of  the  political  orator  is  not  to  make  men 
vote  as  they  would  not  have  voted  if  he  had  not  been 
there  to  move  them,  the  labour  of  the  orator  would  be 
labour  thrown  away. 

Now  here  again,  it  may  be  urged  by  the  doctrinaires 
of  pure  democracy,  we  have  a  conclusion  which,  if  it  be 
true  at  all,  is  true  only  in  a  cloudland  of  idle  academic 
quibbling.  It  is,  they  may  say,  a  conclusion  which 
would,  if  practically  accepted,  destroy  all  such  move- 
ments as  are  now  called  "campaigns,"  all  newspapers 
which  did  not  strictly  confine  themselves  to  the  publica- 
tion of  bare  news  unaccompanied  by  explanation  or 
comment,  and — more  unthinkable  still — it  would  actually 
destroy  the  great  political  meeting.  These  things  can, 
these  things  must  co-exist,  so  such  persons  will  say,  with 
democracy  which  is  pure  in  the  highest  degree  possible — 
in  other  words,  which  is  pure  to  all  reasonable  intents 
and  purposes;  and  no  truth  can  be  established  of  any 
practical  value  by  comparing  it  with  a  democracy  in 
which  all  such  things  were  absent,  and  which  could  not 
exist  anywhere  except  in  a  fantastic  dream.  And  in 
arguing  thus,  such  persons  would  up  to  a  point  be  right. 
The  logic  of  pure  democracy,  if  applied  in  the  way  here 
indicated,  would  make  a  clean  sweep  of  all  those  methods 
and  institutions  with  which  democratic  action  has  thus 
far  been  identified.  But  should  such  persons  go  on  to 
object  that,  if  these  methods  and  these  institutions  were 
absent,  no  democracy  of  any  kind,  pure  or  impure, 
would  be  possible,  they  would  be  wrong. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  throughout  the  discussion 
in  which  we  are  immediately  engaged  we  have  been 
dealing   only   with   those   Composite   questions   which. 


PURE  DEMOCRACY   IN  ACTION      43 

constantly  changing  their  form,  always  highly  complex, 
and  peculiar  to  the  life  of  great  and  elaborately  civilised 
States,  comprise  nearly  all  the  questions  which,  to  any 
important  extent,  demand  the  formation  of  any  novel 
will  by  anybody.  But  let  us  only  turn  back  to  the 
questions  which  have  here  been  called  Fundamental,  and 
which  still  persist  everywhere,  though  constantly  inter- 
tangled  with  others ;  and  we  shall  find,  as  has  been  said 
already  that  with  regard  to  these  a  pure  democratic 
wiiJ,  which  requires  for  its  formation  and  maintenance 
neither  campaigns,  newspapers,  meetings,  nor  even 
private  discussion,  is  so  far  from  being  an  impossible 
fancy  that  it  is  an  inexpugnable  fact  in  the  life  of  all 
societies ;  and  if  we  compare  this  will  with  the  only  kinds 
of  general  will  which  can,  with  regard  to  Composite  ques- 
tions, be  induced  to  form  and  record  themselves,  we  have 
a  standard  by  which  to  measure  the  difference  between 
these  last  and  the  will  on  which  pure  democracy,  as  a 
political  theory,  rests. 

Let  us  suppose,  then,  that  a  formal  reaffirmation  was 
necessary  of  a  general  judgment  to  the  effect  that  robbery 
and  arson  were  evils  of  an  intolerable  kind,  and  that  a 
police  force,  with  whose  efficiency  the  public  was  already 
familiar,  should  be  maintained  as  a  defence  against  them. 
What  need  would  there  be  of  meetings  all  over  the 
country  to  secure  the  due  expression  of  such  a  judgment 
by  everybody  ?     If  a  meeting  were  called  for  this  pur- 
pose, the  most  powerful  orator  on  the  platform  could  tell 
the  audience  nothing  which  every  member  of  the  audi- 
ence could  not  tell  the  orator.     A  meeting  might  as 
well  be  held  for  the  purpose  of  expressing  a  belief  in  the 
fact  that  Queen  Anne  was  dead.     Why,  then,  is  it  that, 
when  Composite  questions  are  at  issue,  such  as  that  of 
Free  Trade  for  England  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  meetings  are,  in  all  constitutional  countries,  one 
of  the  principal  expedients  to  which  all  parties  resort  ? 
Why  are  public  buildings  packed  with  excited  crowds  ? 
Why  does  a  Bright  or  a  Chamberlain  strain  every  nerve 
m    addressing   them,    often    continuing    patiently    this 
arduous  labour  for  years  ?     The  reason  why  public  meet- 
ings would  be  superfluous  and  ridiculous  in  connection 
with  Fundamental  questions,  whilst  they  are  in  connec- 


44      LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

tion  with  Composite  questions  necessary,  is  this.  Whereas 
in  the  former  case  the  wills  of  the  many,  as  freely 
formed  by  each,  are  practically  the  same  in  substance 
and  are  thus  spontaneously  united  in  a  cumulative  will 
already,  the  wills  of  the  many  in  the  latter  case  are 
vaorue,  various,  and  for  the  most  part  practical  nullities, 
and  cannot  acquire  any  general  meaning  whatever,  until 
the  few,  treating  them  as  so  much  raw  material,  manu- 
facture such  a  meaning  out  of  them  by  intricate  processes 
of  their  own. 

If  any  one  doubts  whether  this  manufacturing  pro- 
cess IS  necessary,  conclusive  proof  that  it  is  so  is  to 
be  found  in  the  mere  fact  that,  in  spite  of  its  immense 
cost  m  the  way  both  of  money  and  effort,  the  task  of 
conducting  it  is  systematically  and  continually  under- 
taken; just  as  if  proof  were  required  that  raw  cotton 
from  America  is  not  in  itself  cotton  ready  to  be  stitched 
into  night-shirts,  such  proof  would  be  found  in  the  mere 
existence  of  the  spindles  and  the  mills  of  Lancashire. 
Here,  however,  it  must  be  noted  is  a  fact  which  has  a 
converse  side.     If  the  process  carried  on  by  the  few  of 
manipulating  the  wills  of  the  many  is  shown  to  be  neces- 
sary by  the  mere  fact  of  its  being  undertaken,  the  in- 
tensity of  effort  involved  in  it  shows  something  else  as 
well.     It  shows  that  the  wills  of  the  many,  however 
incapable  in  their  crude  and  spontaneous  forms  of  deter- 
mining the  actions  of  a  government  as  to  any  questions 
but  the  simplest,  are  far  from  being  purely  passive  and 
without  some  bent  of  their  own  ;  for  otherwise  the  process 
of  manipulating  them  w^ould  be  far  less  laborious  than 
it  is.     There  is  not  only  action  on  the  part  of  the  rela- 
tively few ;  there  is  also  reaction  on  the  part  of  the  rela- 
tively many.     This  fact  will  be  fully  discussed  hereafter 
in   connection   with   other  questions,   not   merely  with 
those  which  are  commonly  called  political ;  but  it  does 
not  affect  the  counter-fact  with  which  alone  we  are  con- 
cerned at  present,  that  in  the  political  government  of 
any  large  and  complex  society,  unless  some  exceptional 
influence  were  systematically  exercised  by  the  few,  there 
would  be  on  the  part  of  the  many  no  effective  action  or 
reaction  at  all. 

Such  being  the  case,  then,  the  result  of  the  preceding 


\ 


BOTH   PRINCIPLES   NEEDED         45 

analysis  may  be  summed  up  by  saying  that  all  current 
definitions  of  democracy  err,  even  before  they  are  stated, 
by  reason  of  a  false  assumption  which  underlies  the 
formulation  of  all  of  them.  They  all  assume  that  demo- 
cracy is  a  system  of  government  of  some  kind.  This 
is  precisely  what,  except  in  primitive  and  minute  com- 
munities, pure  democracy  is  not,  nor  ever  has  been,  nor 
ever  can  be.  It  is  not  and  never  can  be  a  system  of 
government  of  any  kind.  It  is  simply  one  principle  out 
of  two,  the  other  being  that  of  oligarchy,  which  two  may 
indeed  be  combined  in  very  various  proportions,  but 
neither  of  which  alone  will  produce  what  is  meant  by 
a  government,  any  more  than  saltpetre  or  charcoal  wh\ 
itself  produce  gunpowder. 

It  has,  however,  been  pointed  out  already  that  this 
general  argument  has  thus  far  been  mainly  applied  to 
the  government  of  entire  nations,  either  as  carried  on  by 
some  party  actually  in  possession  of  power,  or  to  the 
conduct  of  some  other  party  which,  having  possessed 
it  once,  has  some  reasonable  prospect  of  regaining  it, 
and  is  constantly  on  the  watch  to  do  so.  We  will  now 
turn  our  attention  to  those  sectional  parties  which  are 
known  by  such  names  as  Leagues,  Associations,  Federa- 
tions or  Unions,  each  of  which  aims  at  exercising  over 
public  affairs  some  will  which  is  democratic,  at  all  events 
so  far  as  its  own  members  are  concerned,  and  consider 
whether  democracy  without  any  oligarchic  concomitant 
is  more  practicable  in  the  microcosm  of  the  League  than 
it  is  in  the  macrocosm  of  a  great  and  highly  civilised 
nation.  With  regard  to  this  question,  as  will  be  seen 
in  the  following  chapter,  evidence  is  available  of  a 
signally  pertinent  kind. 


CHAPTER    V 

REVOLUTIONARY   OLIGARCHIES 

Shortly  before  the  outbreak  of  the  great  European 
war,  a  distinguished  economist,  Professor  R.  Michels,  of 
the  Universities  of  Basle  and  Turin,  issued  an  elaborate 
volume  devoted  to  an  examination  of  the  democratic 
principle  as  operative  in  those  sectional  parties  whose 
one  avowed  aim  is  to  exhibit  it  in  its  purest  form.  These 
parties,  he  says,  which  side  by  side  make  their  appear- 
ance everywhere— a  Socialist  Party  on  the  one  hand,  a 
Labour  Party  on  the  other — are  still  everywhere  a 
minority ;  but  they  have  for  the  last  half  century  been 
increasing  with  such  rapidity  that  they  are  now  an 
important  minority  in  most  European  countries.  The 
former  is  more  comprehensive  than  the  latter,  and  stands 
for  "the  rights  of  man,"  whilst  the  latter  stands  more 
particularly  for  the  rights  of  a  man  as  a  labourer.  The 
attitude  of  both,  however,  towards  existing  systems  of 
government — even  towards  those  in  which  a  radical  ele- 
ment preponderates— is,  says  Professor  Michels,*  the 
same.  The  object,  or  at  all  events  the  professed  object, 
of  both  is  not  to  play  a  permanent  part  in  these  systems 
of  government  as  they  are,  but  rather  to  establish  in 
their  place  a  system  altogether  new,  in  which  pure  demo- 
cracy, unadulterated  by  any  alien  element,  and  repre- 
senting solely  the  will  of  equal  and  equally  influential 
units,  shall  be  a  realised  fact  at  last.  Hence,  says  the 
author,  if  we  wish  to  see  what  democracy  means  in 
practice,  it  is  in  the  actual  development  and  working 
of  these  two  parties,  and  of  the  many  and  various  sub- 

^  Political  Parties,  by  Robert  Michels,  Professor  of  Economics  and 
Statistics  in  the  University  of  Basle,  and  Professor  of  Statistics  in  the 
University  of  Turin.  English  translation  by  Eden  and  Cedar  Paul. 
London.     Jarrold  and  Sons.     1915. 

46 


i 


TRADE   UNION   OLIGARCHS  47 

sections  of  them,  that  the  question  can  be  most  easily. 
If  not  most  comprehensively,  studied.  It  will,  therefore, 
be  mstructiye  to  consider  the  nature  of  the  conclusions 
drawn  by  him  from  a  mass  of  detailed  and  accumulated 
data,  and  compare  them  with  the  conclusions  which  have 
already  been  elucidated  here. 

The  general  conclusion  reached  is  in  both  cases  the 
same— that,  except  in  the  case  of  communities  or  organ- 
isations which  are  small,  and  whose  objects  are  extremely 
simple,  no  corporate  action  which  is  purely  democratic 
IS  possible,  and  that  every  attempt  to  eliminate  oligarchy 
is  bound  to  end  in  a  re-creation  of  it.     This  conclusion, 
says  Professor  Michels,  is  rendered  specially  clear  by  the 
case  of  those  parties  or  organisations  on  which  his  own 
attention  has  been  concentrated,  for  the  leaders  of  these, 
together  with  the  rank  and  file,  have  been  clearlv  con- 
scious from  the  first  of  what  the  primary  principle  of 
pure  democracy  is.     They  have  realised  that  pure  demo- 
cracy, as  represented  by  any  body  of  men  bound  together 
in  the  pursuance  of  any  united  policy  means  that  no 
unit  of  this  mass  shall  exercise  any  influence  greater  than 
that  which  is  exercised  by  any  other,  and  that  no  one 
unit  shall,  on  behalf  of  the  rest,  do  or  execute  anything 
which  any  one  of  the  rest  could  not  have  executed  as 
well  and  with  equal  ease,  and  would  not  have  sponta- 
neously executed  in  substantially  the  same  way.     They 
have  not  only  realised  this  as  a  matter  of  unambiguous 
theory,  but  they  set  out  with  showing  that  such  was 
the  case  by  their  conduct.    Thus,  says  Professor  Michels, 
m  l^ngland,  which  was  the  cradle  of  the  Trade  Union 
movement,  some  of  the  Unions  began  with  choosing  their 
officials  by  lot  or  else  in  alphabetical  order,   and  the 
agricultural  unions  of  Italy,  in  their  earlier  days,  went 
farther.     Every  proposal  of  the  officials  had  to  be  re- 
duced to  wntmg,  and  before  it  could  be  put  into  execu- 
tion It  had  to  be  sanctioned  by  the  signature  of  every 
one  of  the  members.     Moreover,   the  official  accounts 
were  open  to  the  inspection  of  all,  so  that  any  member 
might  be  able,  as  soon  as  his  own  turn  came,  to  step  at 
a  moment  s  notice  into  any  vacated  place.     But  as  time 
went  on   as  the  membership  of  the  Unions  grew,  and  the 
auties  of  the  officials  assumed  a  more  complex  character 


48      LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 


this  primitive  plan  of  election  or  selection  at  haphazard 
was  generally  found  to  be  more  and  more  inadequate. 
It  was  found  that  the  duties  of  the  officials  comprised 
some  exercise  of  initiative,  and  that  a  leader,  if  he  was 
to  be  worth  anything,  must  in  most  cases  have  natural 
talents  not  to   be   found  in  everybody — especially  the 
talents  of  a  stimulating  or  explanatory  speaker — and 
also  some  special  equipment  in  the  way  of  digested  know- 
ledge.    Hence  the  more  important  of  the  democratic 
organisations  of  to-day  have  abandoned  choice  by  lot 
from  a  medley  of  supposed  equals  for  a  method  so  elabor- 
ately   different    that    some    of    them    have    established 
colleges  at  which  certain  students— a  carefully  picked 
mmority  who  promise  to  be  fit  for  leadership— are  hand- 
somely paid  and  put  through  a  course  of  training,  so 
that  out  of  these  a  minority  smaller  still  may  be  ulti- 
mately chosen  by  their  teachers  as  eligible  for  posts  of 
power.     The  existence  of  even  a  few  institutions  of  this 
kind  is  an  index  of  how  far  the  spirit  by  which  they  are 
animated  differs  from  that  which  prompted  the  pioneers 
of  the  Trade  Union  movement  to  leave  the  selection  of 
their  leaders,  so  far  as  was  possible,  to  chance,  and  de- 
liberately to  ignore,  rather  than  deliberately  measure, 
such  differences  in  public  efficiency  as  exist  between  man 
and  man. 

It  is  argued  by  some.  Professor  Michels  observes,  that 
the  power  as  exercised  by  the  leaders  thus  selected  repre- 
sents, not  a  negation  of  the  democratic  principle,  but  its 
triumph,  such  men  being  nothing  but  specially  skilled 
employees,  hired  by  the  average  mass  to  do  its  difficult 
work  for  it,  and  liable  to  curt  dismissal  if  they  are  not 
punctual  in  obeying  their  masters'  orders.  But  to  speak 
of  such  persons  as  nothing  more  than  employees  is 
merely,  he  says,  to  play  with  words.  Whether  we  call 
them  employees  or  no,  the  plain  fact  is  that  the  men  by 
whom  the  affairs  of  the  democratic  parties  are  conducted, 
though  they  may  perhaps  take  some  orders,  give  far 
more  orders  than  they  take;  and  although,  like  em- 
ployees generally,  they  are  as  a  matter  of  theory  always 
liable  to  be  dismissed,  it  is  rarely  possible  to  dismiss 
them  by  purely  democratic  means.  The  reasons  why 
this  is  so  may,  he  says,  be  divided  into  two  groups,  the 


OLIGARCHIC    LEAEERS  49 

diffir^ik ''tt''^  ^l  ""^^f  ^"^^  ^'^'^^'  ^^^^^  ^^^d^^  dismissal 
difficult,  the  other  of  positive  reasons,  which  combine 

soS'th^r^f  "^."^'^  permanent, 'and  augment  ?n 
so  doing  the  kinds  of  power  attached  to  them. 

Of  the  negative  reasons,  the  chief  are,  according  to 
Professor  Michels,  these.     In  the  first  place,  as  the^n- 
fiuence  of  any  democratic  organisation  grows,  and    ?s 
points  of  contact  with  affairs  in  general  multip  y   many 
of  the  duties  of  the  leaders  become  so  highly  technical 
that  any  serious  discussion  of  them  is  over^he  hS 
o  laymen,  and  efficient  criticism  of  the  leaders  in  respect 
of  such  duties  as  these  is  beyond  the  competence  of  the 
mass  of  members  collectively.     In  the  second  place,  the 
efficiency  of  the  leaders  in  the  mana.ement^of  kr^e 
affairs  becomes  more  and  more  dependent,  not  merely  on 
on  ri  ^^^*^^h^*her  these  be  moral  or  m'ental,  but  also 
on  powers  of  judgment  and  prompt  action,  which  most 
men  can  acquire  by  experience  of  office  only.     Hence 
any  leaders  who    having  once  been  chosen,  have  re- 
mained m  office  for  a  certain  number  of  years,  will  be 
men  whom    if  their  party  dismissed  them,  it  would  be 
very  difficult  to  replace.    Further,  the  democratic  parties 
have  found  out  from  experience  how  greatly  their  ex- 
ternal influence  and  also  their  internal  cohesion  depend 
on  their  actions  possessing  a  certain  substratum  of  con- 
tmuity,  and  are  therefore  inclined  on  principle,  except 
m  extreme  cases    to  preserve  a  continuity  of  leadership 
as  a  thing  desirable  m  itself.     All  these  facts,  except  in 
extreme  cases  (such  as  that  in  which  an  Italian  agitator 
was  found  to  be  taking  fees  from  employers   for  his 
services  m  settling  strikes),  tend  to  remove  the  leaders 
from  the  category  of  mere  employees,  and  endow  them 
with  powers  largely,  if  not  wholly,  independent  of  the 
source  from  which  they  were  first  derived.     Thus,  the 
Amalgamated  Association  of  Operative  Cotton-spinners 
m  England  have  a  rule  to  the  effect  that  the  posts  of 
their  officials  shall  be  permanent,  unless  one  or  all  of  the 
staff  should  provoke  universal  censure.     Similarly,  with 
special  reference  to  a  strike  of  the  first  magnitude,  a 
resolution    says  Professor  Michels,  was  passed  by  the 
Italian  Federation  of  Labour,  that  even  if  the  results  of 
a  referendum  should  be  adverse  to  the  views  of  the 


I 


N 


50       LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

leaders  then  in  office,  this  should  not  be  construed  as 
invalidating  the  position  of  the  leaders  themselves ;  whilst 
still  more  widely  significant  is  the  general  fact  that  in 
Gerniany  the  leaders  of  the  Socialist  and  the  Trade  Union 
parties  have  proved  to  be  practically  irremovable  except 
by  death  or  voluntary  resignation. 

Further,  to  such  difficulties  of  a  mental  and  tactical 
kind  which  render  dismissal  of  the  leaders  by  the  action 
of  the  mass  difficult,  there  are  two  more  to  be  added, 
one  of  which  is  purely  mechanical,  whilst  the  other, 
which  underlies  this,  has  its  roots  in  human  nature 
itself. 

The  mechanical  difficulty  consists  of  the  simple  fact 
that,  as  soon  as  a  party  has  become  sufficiently  numerous 
to  constitute,  by  pervading  a  country,  a  force  in  national 
life,  it  becomes  impossible  that  all,  or  even  most  of  its 
members,  these  being  widely  diffused,  shall  meet  in  their 
thousands  except  on  very  rare  occasions,  and  they  would 
even  then  be  unmanageable  for  the  purposes  of  detailed 
criticism.  But  closely  connected  with  this  mechanical 
result,  increase  of  membership  has  brought  to  light 
another  which  is  in  itself  of  wholly  independent  origin. 
Although  the  parties  of  revolutionary  protest  are,  in 
every  country  where  they  exist,  a  minority  of  the  nation 
as  a  whole,  and  are  thus  presumably  permeated  by  some 
special  democratic  fervour,  the  majority  of  this  minority, 
with  regard  to  questions  of  detail,  is  everywhere  found 
in  practice  to  be  apathetic  to  such  a  degree  that  critics 
have  described  them  as  suffering  from  the  malady  of 
"gregarious  inertia."  Impatient  enthusiasts  have  said 
of  them  that  these  masses  of  professed  democrats  are 
no  better  than  ordinary  men,  **  being  far  more  interested 
in  a  road  at  the  bottom  of  their  back  gardens  "  than 
in  any  administrative  details  connected  with  democratic 
policy,  and  that,  except  when  excited  by  some  sensa- 
tional cry — "A  bas  la  vie  chere,"  for  instance — they 
signify  no  interest  in  party  affairs  whatever.  Thus,  says 
Professor  Michels,  on  occasions  both  in  Holland  and 
Italy,  when  the  conduct  of  the  leaders  was  attacked  with 
regard  to  the  most  momentous  questions,  the  number  of 
members  who  took  the  trouble  to  vote  varied  from  one- 
fifth  to  one-tenth  of  the  whole.     In  France,  of  the  mem- 


OLIGARCHIC  LEADERS 


51 


bers  of  the  General  Federation  of  Labour,  only  one  in 
fifty  IS  a  reader  of  the  party  journal.     In  this  case  and 
in  that  of  similar  organisations  everywhere,  the  section 
of  the  rank  and  file  which  alone  keeps  a  watchful  eye  on 
the  doings  of  the  party  leaders  is  a  certain  small  minor- 
ity, which,  distinguishable  from  the  rest  as  oil  is  dis- 
tinguishable from  water,  makes  a  habit,  like  the  habit 
of  inveterate  playgoers,  of  attending  party  meetings,  and 
fills  hall  after  hall  with  the  same  familiar  faces.     It  is 
from  this  minority  that,  except  on  very  rare  occasions, 
all  close  and  effective  criticisms  of  the  party  leaders 
emanates,  and  it  has,  says  Professor  Michels,  been  found 
that  this  minority,  which  alone  realises  what  the  diffi- 
culties of  party  leadership  are,  is  for  the  most  part  dis- 
posed to  support,  rather  than  attack,  those  at  present 
m  office  who  are  taking  such  difficulties  on  themselves. 
Amongst  the  minority  in  question  there  are  on  occasion, 
doubtless,  embittered  malcontents,  and  in  the  activity 
of  such,  not  m  spontaneous  disaffection  on  the  part  of 
the  larger  number,  lies  the  only  adverse  influences  which 
the  leaders  have  to  fear.     But  influences  of  this  kind, 
Professor  Michels  observes,  are  not  in  their  origin  demo- 
cratic, nor  do  they  represent  any  protest  against  the 
influence  of  an  oligarchy  as  such.     On  the  contrary,  they 
originate  m  men  who  are  anxious  to  be  oligarchs  them- 
selves, and  who  seek  to  convert  the  mass  into  an  instru- 
ment of  their  own  ambition.     Such  revolts,  when  they 
occur,  may  be  formidable  and  at  times  successful,  but, 
says  Professor  Michels,  definite  experience  has  shown 
that  the  actual  leaders,  as  a  rule,  not  only  are  able  to 
hold  their  own  against  them,  but  tend  to  acquire  in- 
creased powers  in  doing  so,  these  indeed  being  thrust  on 
them  by  the  mass  of  their  respective  parties,  with  a  view 
to  preventing  the  recurrence  of  paralysing  or  useless 
discords.     Amongst  the  new  powers  thus  placed  in  the 
leaders'  hands  is  the  power,  which  according  to  circum- 
stances is  more  or  less  fully  developed,  of  choosing,  as 
posts  fall  vacant,  new  colleagues  or  subordinates  at  their 
own   personal   discretion.     Thus,    in   Germany,   of   the 
Irade  Union  officials  one  in  every  five  is  a  nominee  of 
the  Central  Council.     By  a  congress  of  Trade  Unions  in 
Italy,  held  at  Modena  in  the  year  1910,  it  was  not  only 


52       LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 

permitted  to  the  leaders,  but  enjoined  on  them  as  a 
primary  duty,  that,  exercising  their  best  judgment,  they 
should  nominate  every  member  of  their  official  staff 
themselves;  whilst  as  for  the  General  Federation  of 
Labour  in  France,  which  of  all  labour  organisations 
claims  to  be  most  revolutionary,  the  highest  posts  in 
this  are,  as  they  fall  vacant,  filled  up  by  a  process  which 
is  tantamount  to  nomination  by  the  chief  secretary. 

It  is  idle,  the  author  proceeds,  in  the  face  of  facts  hke 
these,  to  pretend  that  the  democratic  leaders  are  no  more 
than  employees.     It  is  idler  still  to  dismiss  the  conten- 
tion that  they  are  oligarchs  as  though  it  were  a  baseless 
calumny  due  to  conservative  prejudice ;  for  this  is,  on 
the  contrary,  the  precise  contention  or  accusation  which 
the  various  democratic  groups  are  constantly  levelling 
at  one  another.     Indeed,  the  intellectual  representatives 
of  certain  of  them  do  not  altogether  repel  it,  but  are,  as 
we  shall  see  presently,  coming  to  admit  that  some  ele- 
ment of  oligarchy  is  inevitable.  ,       4.  •  4. 
The  groups,  however,  which  still  adhere  to  the  strict 
teaching  of  Marx  are.  Professor  Michels  observes,  singu- 
larly tart  and  vehement  in  declaring  that  the  charge  of 
oligarchy  has  no  application  to  themselves— and  that 
they,  at  all  events,  still  reflect  in  their  organisation  the 
democratic  teaching  and  the  democratic  mind  of  their 
master.     It  will,   therefore,  be  instructive  to  consider 
what,  as  shown  by  his  conduct,  the  practical  mind  of 
their   great   master   was.     The    principal    life-work    of 
Marx,  apart  from  his  theoretical  writings,  was  the  found- 
ing of  the  International— a  society  which  was  to  exhibit 
his  own  theories  in  action.     The  International  was  to 
be  a  Union  of  the  manual  labourers  of  the  world,  having 
for  its  object  to  combine  them  as  equal  units  in  pure 
democratic  action  against  one  common  foe— the  ubiqui- 
tous  oligarchy   of   the   present   employing   classes.      It 
was    necessary    that,    like    every    other    organisation, 
this  world-wide   democracy  should  have   some  central 
executive.     There  thus  came  into  existence  a  supreme 
General   Council,    and    if   this   Council   was   to   be    an 
implement  of  democracy  in  any  sense,  it  was  further 
necessary  that  the  labourers  of  every  included   coun- 
try should,  by  some  means  or  other,   be  represented 


SOCIALIST   AUTOCRATS 


53 


in  it.  It  was,  therefore,  not  unnaturally  proposed  that 
for  this  purpose  the  labourers  of  each  country  should 
elect  and  be  represented  by  a  President — a  compatriot, 
a  labourer  like  themselves,  and  acquainted  with  their 
own  conditions.  This  proposal,  however,  through  the 
influence  of  Marx  was  negatived.  It  was,  indeed,  re- 
solved that  each  country  should  be  represented  by  a 
Secretary,  but  this  resolution  was  immediately  followed 
by  another,  to  the  effect  that  these  secretaries  need 
have  no  connection  whatever,  by  way  either  of  birth  or 
election,  with  the  country  which  they  affected  to  repre- 
sent, but  should  be  chosen  from  amongst  its  own 
members  by  the  General  Council  itself.  By  this  means, 
so  Marx  and  his  friends  announced,  a  glorious  event  had 
been  accomplished,  new  to  human  history.  The  world- 
wide democracy  of  Labour  "had  at  last  been  provided 
with  a  common  and  purely  democratic  leadership," 
which  announcement  was  almost  directly  followed  by 
the  nomination  of  Engels,  the  intimate  friend  of  Marx, 
as  acting  secretary  for  four  countries  at  once.  Such 
were  the  first  notes  of  the  overture  to  the  opera  of  uni- 
versal democracy — of  the  overthrow  of  the  few  by  the 
many  under  the  guidance  of  scientific  sociahsm.  The 
active  performers  were  a  small  circle  of  men  who  pro- 
posed to  make  all  humanity  dance  to  their  own  tunes, 
and  out  of  this  small  group  there  was  one  man  whose 
notes  from  the  very  first  were  heard  above  all  the  rest. 
This  one  man  was  Marx,  whose  influence  as  time  went 
on  asserted  itself  more  and  more.  Not  only  did  Marx, 
in  pursuance  of  his  own  tactical  purposes,  shift  the 
meeting-place  of  the  Council  from  London  to  New  York 
at  his  pleasure,  but  he  edited  most  of  the  documents 
which  the  Council  issued,  revising  them  on  his  own 
authority;  and  at  last  he  was  openly  attacked  by  two 
indignant  colleagues  for  having  dared  to  make  public  a 
Manifesto  to  which  their  signatures  were  not  attached. 
Jealousy  matured  and  spread.  He,  and  Engels  along 
with  him,  were  denounced  as  presuming  upstarts.  One 
after  another  most  of  his  colleagues  deserted  him,  de- 
claring that  he  and  they  could  no  longer  work  together ; 
and  mainly  owing  to  the  quarrels  of  these  few  individuals 
the  terrible  International   came  to  an  early  end.     Its 


54.      LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

collapse  was  not  due  to  the  action  of  democracy  rebelling 
against  oligarchy,  but  of  several  oligarchs  rebelling 
against  the  superior  power  of  one.  "The  larval  mon- 
archy of  Marx,"  as  Professor  Michels  calls  it,  perished, 
not  by  the  stones  of  the  populace,  but  by  the  daggers 
of  his  own  associates. 

When  we  consider  that  Marx  is  still  revered  by  Social- 
ists as  the  intellectual  founder  of  the  modern  democratic 
movement,  his  practical  career  as  an  autocrat  has  an 
almost  unique  significance,  as  illustrating  how  inevitably 
the  power,  which  in  theory  is  that  of  the  multitude,  is 
bound,  as  the  condition  of  its  exercise,  to  centre  itself  in 
the  persons  of  a  few,  whilst  when  one  of  the  few  has 
appreciably  a  stronger  will  than  the  rest,  it  tends  to 
centre  itself  in  the  person  of  one  man  only. 

Cases  like  that  of  Marx  in  his  role  of  autocrat  are  rare, 
for  the  kinds  of  genius  are  rare  which  render  such  cases 
possible ;  but  whether  power  be  centred  in  the  persons  of 
a  small  class  or  of  an  individual,  it  is  at  all  events  the 
antithesis  of  that  impossible  power  which  the  theory  of 
pure  democracy  ascribes  to  the  homogeneous  mass.  It 
may,  says  Professor  Michels,  be  urged  that  the  more 
extreme  of  the  oligarchic  characteristics  by  which  certain 
leaders,  such  as  Marx,  have  notoriously  separated  them- 
selves from  the  people,  are  due,  not  to  the  necessities  of 
the  situation,  but  merely  to  the  fact  that  human  nature 
is  weak,  and  that  some  of  these  men  succumb,  by  a  moral 
accident,  to  the  selfish  whispers  of  insidiously  disguised 
ambition.  But,  says  Professor  Michels,  in  the  case  of 
such  extreme  arrogations  of  power,  mere  selfish  ambition 
is  not  the  primary  cause,  although  it  may  be  often 
present.  The  most  absolutely  unselfish  enthusiast,  who 
believes  that  he  can  accomplish  great  things  for  the 
multitude,  is,  in  proportion  to  his  faith  in  his  own 
mission,  bound  to  act  as  an  oligarch,  often  as  a  bare- 
faced autocrat,  no  less  than  the  most  selfish  schemer, 
for  unless  he  is  prepared  to  do  so,  he  must  cease  to  act 
at  all.  Nobody  has  expressed  this  fact  more  clearly  and 
boldly  than  Lassalle,  whose  magnetic  influence  over  his 
followers  was  greater  than  that  of  any  other  modern 
revolutionary.  Lassalle  was  no  doubt  ambitious  in  the 
strictly  personal  sense — ambitious  to  an  extraordinary 


SOCIALIST  AUTOCRATS 


55 


degree,  but  his  claims  to  autocracy  were  made  on  public 
grounds,  and  these,  he  was  able  to  boast,  were  under- 
stood by  his  followers  no  less  plainly  than  by  himself. 
"It  is,"  he  said,  "well  recognised  by  the  masses  of  the 
labourers  themselves  that,  if  their  wills  are  to  be  effec- 
tive they  must  be  forged  into  a  single  hammer,  and  that 
this  hammer  must  be  wielded  by  the  sinews  of  one  strong 
hand.  And  this,"  he  added,  "  which  happens  in  our  own 
organisation  already,  represents  in  miniature  the  coming 
social  order."  To  the  example  of  Lassalle  two  others 
may  be  added,  which  are  not  mentioned  by  Professor 
Michels,  and  to  which  we  shall  recur  hereafter — namely 
those  of  Robert  Owen,  who  attempted  to  establish  a 
community  purely  democratic  in  America,  and  of 
William  Lane,  who  attempted  a  similar  feat  in  Paraguay. 
Owen,  who  in  some  respects  was  wholly  without  thought 
of  self,  had  no  sooner  settled  his  adherents  in  their  new 
homes,  than  he  did  what  Lassalle  did  not  do.  He  in- 
sisted on  divesting  himself  of  every  shred  of  power  which 
was  not  shared  equally  by  all.  Left  to  themselves,  how- 
ever, and  soon  threatened  with  ruin,  his  adherents  im- 
plored him  to  save  them  by  assuming  the  office  of 
dictator.  With  great  reluctance  he  did  so.  Affairs 
began  to  mend.  Again  he  resigned  his  office.  Troubles 
again  beginning,  he  was  once  more  forced  to  resume  it, 
the  moral  of  these  events  being  ultimately  emphasised 
by  the  sequel.  Lane  began  as  a  preacher  of  the  most 
absolute  democratic  equality,  denouncing  every  man  who 
aspired  to  be  more  influential  than  his  fellows ;  but  even 
whilst  his  practical  experiment  was  no  more  than  a 
project,  the  question  had  been  forced  on  him  of  whether 
a  pure  democracy,  if  it  is  to  have  any  practical  success, 
must  not  have  at  the  head  of  it  what  he  described  as 
"  some  better  Napoleon,  with  the  heart  of  Christ  and  the 
brain  of  a  Jay  Gould  " ;  and  this  question,  as  we  shall 
see  in  a  future  chapter,  he  answered  by  attempting  the 
part  of  all  three  characters  himself. 

It  is  not,  however,  necessary  for  the  purpose  of  our 
immediate  argument  to  lay  any  special  stress  on  extreme 
cases  such  as  these.  What  here  concerns  us  is  the  fact, 
not  that  oligarchy  on  occasions  tends  to  culminate  in 
autocracy,  but  that  even  in  the  case  of  those  sectional 


56       LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

and  eclectic  parties  which  have  the  realisation  of  demo- 
cracy as  their  conscious  and  primary  object,  any  attempt 
at  democratic  action  with  regard  to  any  complex  ques- 
tions is  bound  to  culminate  in  the  establishment  of  a 
more  or  less  numerous  oligarchy.  This,  indeed,  in 
general  terms  was  admitted  long  ago  by  the  arch-revolu- 
tionary, Proudhon.  As  soon,  he  said,  as  any  masses  of 
men  depute  the  power  latent  in  their  mere  numbers  to 
representatives  or  selected  leaders  in  order  that  it  may 
be  put  to  any  effective  use,  these  men,  if  they  are  so  to 
use  it,  are  bound — they  cannot  help  themselves — to  con- 
solidate it  in  their  own  persons.  "All  power,"  he 
continues,  "thus  moves  in  a  cycle.  Issuing  from  the 
People,  it  ends  by  raising  itself  above  the  People." 

It  remains  for  us  to  consider  how  experience  since  the 
time  of  Proudhon  has  affected  the  theoretical  as  well  as 
the  practical  views  of  the  intellectual  leaders  of  the  demo- 
cratic parties  of  to-day.  It  will  be  found  that,  though 
for  the  purpose  of  playing  on  popular  sentiment  the 
formulae  of  pure  democracy  are  as  widely  used  as  ever, 
and  are  indeed  adopted  not  only  by  would-be  revolu- 
tionaries, but  also  by  parties  whose  views  are  conserva- 
tive or  conservatively  liberal,  serious  revolutionary 
thinkers,  in  so  far  as  they  speak  seriously,  are  everywhere 
modifying  the  theory  which  these  formulae  express,  and 
investing  it  with  a  new  import  which  is  widely  different 
from  the  old.  They  are  seeking  to  justify  in  theory 
those  methods  of  conducting  affairs  which  have  been 
found  by  their  active  leaders,  whether  autocrats  or 
olit^archic  groups,  to  be  absolutely  inevitable  in  prac- 
tice. This  fact  will  be  evident  to  any  one  who  has  given 
anv  careful  attention  to  their  more  recent  utterances. 
Professor  Michels  has  collected  a  number  of  significant 
and  typical  illustrations  of  it.  Of  these,  for  our  present 
purpose,  it  will  be  enough  to  mention  the  following. 
Thev  mav  be  divided  into  two  groups,  the  one  relating 
to  the  limitations  of  popular  power,  the  other  to  its  true 
foundations,  or  the  particular  sources  from  which  it 
veallv  emanates. 

Of  the  various  current  definitions  of  absolutely  pure 
democ^acv,  one  of  the  most  famous,  as  has  here  been 
observed  already,  is  "Government  of  the  People,  for  the 


REVISED   IDEA  OF  THE  DEMOS     57 

People,  by  the  People."    This  formula,  says  Professor 
Michels,  the  more  serious  democratic  thinkers,  especiallv 
in  Germany  and  England,  have  now  radically  revised,  or 
m  other  words  repudiated.     They  assert  with  redoubled 
emphasis  that  everything  must  be  done  for  the  People, 
but  they  wholly  deny  that  the  People  can  accomplish 
this      everything"  by  themselves.     "If  democracy  is 
to  be  effective,"  they  say,  "democracy  must  be  taken 
as  including  the  personal  authority  '  of  leaders.'  "     "In 
all  the  affairs  of  management,"  says  one  of  them,  "for 
the  decision  of  which  there  is  requisite  specialised  know- 
ledge, and  for  the  performance  of  which  a  certain  dec^ree 
of  authority  is  essential,  a  measure  of  despotism  must 
be  allowed,  and  thereby  a  deviation  from  the  principles 
of   pure   democracy.      From   the    democratic   point    of 
view,     he  continues,  "this  is  perhaps  an  evil,  but  it  is 
a  necessary  evil."     The  leader  must,  says  a  philosopher 
of  the  English  Labour  Party,  "have  a  scheme  of  his 
own  to  which  he  works,  and  he  must  have  the  power 
to  make  his  wil    prevail."     "Apart  from  his  leaders," 
says  Bernstem,  "the  average  man  has  no  political  com- 
petence. .  .      Everything  which  is  tactically  of  import- 
ance must  of  necessity  devolve  on  the  leaders;  "  and  it 
has   been   seriously   suggested   that   the   party  of  true 
democracy  m  England  would  be  directed  to  the  best 
advantage  by  a  cabinet  of  "three  jDersons." 

The  theory,  then,  being  thus  discarded  that  the  great 
mass  of  the  people,  as  units  of  equal  influence,  can 
determine  the  government  of  any  complex  society  for 
themselves  and  the  action  of  some  power  which  is  above 
the  people  being  thus  admitted  as  necessarv,  it  remains 
to  be  asked  from  what  popular  source  the  power  of  the 
autocrat,  the  triumvirate,  or  the  leading  minority  (what- 
ever Its  number)  is  to  be  derived.  It  is  not  contended 
by  any  of  the  new  theorists  that  those  who  hold  this 
power  shall  hold  it  m  right  of  inheritance.  They  must 
therefore,  have  acquired  it  at  some  time  of  their  lives 
through  a  popular  sanction  of  some  kind,  which  commits 
it  to  them  personally,  in  personal  preference  to  others. 
11,  then,  the  masses  as  a  whole  are  incompetent  to  con- 
duct the  government  of  any  complex  society  by  them- 
selves, m  what  sense  are  they  competent  to  select  with 


58      LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

any  discretion  the  particular  men  best  fitted  to  conduct 
it  on  their  behalf?  How  is  this  question  answered  by 
the  new  logic  of  democracy  ? 

The  answer  is  one  which  has  its  basis  in  a  broad 
empirical  fact,  of  which  mention  has  been  made  already, 
and  which  fifty  years  of  experience  have  taught  demo- 
cratic leaders  to  recognise  and  accept  as  general.     This 
is  the  fact  that  as  soon  as  any  revolutionary  party  so 
far  increases  its  membership  as  to  make  it  a  considerable 
force  by  the  mere  weight  of  its  numbers,  it  invariably 
tends  to  divide  itself  into  two  well-marked  sections — 
one  being  a  majority  which,  absorbed  in  its  own  private 
affairs,  would  rather  play  skittles  in  a  tavern  with  a 
revolutionary  name  than  concern  itself  with  the  details 
of  dry  revolutionary  tactics,  which  in  mood,  though  not 
in  theory,  is  afflicted  with  "  a  gregarious  inertia  "  often 
akin  to  conservatism,  and  contents  itself  with  shouting 
for  revolution  in  moments  of  rare  excitement ;  the  other 
being  a  minority  relatively  small,  which  pores  over  party 
journals,  which  listens  with  upturned  faces  to  the  oratory 
of  the  party  platform,  and  whose  party  principles  are 
held  with  the  energy  of  sincere  conviction.     Such  being 
the  case,  then.  Professor  Michels  observes,  the  apathy  of 
the  large  majority,  which  the  democratic  leaders  at  first 
found  disconcerting,  has  now  come  to  be  viewed  by  them 
in  a  very  different  light.     Thus,  he  says,  in  France  active 
members  of  the  General  Federation  of  Labour  argue  that 
the  apathy  of  the  mass  is  positively  favourable  to  the 
true  revolutionary  cause,  for  it  eliminates  what  would 
else  be  opposition  to  the  policy  of  the  more  daring  few. 
Bakunin,  who  at  one  time  was  celebrated  for  the  terrific 
announcement  that  "  the  chariot  of  revolution  was  roll- 
ing, and  gnashing  its  teeth  as  it  rolled,"  had  expressed 
the  same  view  already  in  somewhat  different  language, 
maintaining  that  the  manual  labourers,  who  were  to 
gain  most  from  the  movement,  should  not  be  allowed 
any  voting  power  in  its  management,  and  this  same  view 
or  admission  is  reduced  to  a  definite  formula  by  the 
Italian  revolutionist,  Labriola,  prominent  as  a  preacher 
of  Syndicalism,  who,  having  observed  '*that  it  is  cer- 
tainly not  revolutionary  tactics  to  entrust  the  sword  of 
Brennus  to  any  body  of  men  who,  like  peasant  pro- 


SYNDICALIST  OLIGARCHS 


59 


• 


prietors,  are  inclined  to  the  sloth  of  conservatism," 
proceeds  to  define  what  democracy  in  its  true  sense  is. 
"In  politics,"  he  says,  "as  in  everything  else,  the  last 
thmg  that  true  democracy  means  is  the  influence  of  all 
men  acting  as  units  of  equal  influence,  as  though  right 
were  always  the  sum  of  the  largest  assortment  of  like 
individual  wills.  True  democracy,  on  the  contrary,  is 
the  concentrating  of  power  in  an  Slite,  who  can  best 
judge  of  the  interaction  of  social  cause  and  effect." 

Here  we  have  a  clear  and  temperate  statement  of 
what,  in  the  minds  of  the  leaders  of  modern  revolutionary 
parties,  the  working  conception  of  democracy  has  at  last 
come  to  be.     This  conception,  says  Professor  Michels, 
amounts  "to  a  deliberate  denunciation  of  democracy 
in  any  sense  of  the  word."     It  will,  however,  be  more 
accurate  to  say  that  it  amounts  to  a  conception  of  demo- 
cracy founded  on  a  new  conception  of  the  Demos.    What 
it  means  or  implies  is  that  of  any  given  population  a 
certain   minority  alone   is  found  to   be  endowed  with 
certain  peculiar  energies— namely  those  which  exhibit 
themselves  in  connection  with  social  and  public  questions 
as  the  subject-matter  of  politics ;  that  for  political  pur- 
poses this  minority  alone  constitutes  the  Demos  in  any 
reasonable  sense  of  the  word ;  and  that  in  virtue  of  its 
susceptibility  to  suggestion  on  the  part  of  the  leaders— 
that  is  to  say,  of  the  men  "  who  have  their  own  schemes 
to  which  they  work  "—it  forms  a  Praetorian  guard  on 
which  the  authority  of  the  leaders  rests.     In  other  words, 
according  to  the  modern  theory,  revolutionary  demo- 
cracy (whether  in  the  case  of  a  nation  or  a  party)  is 
primarily  government  by  a  considerable  but  a  relatively 
small  minority,  who  are  not  the  people  but  are  simply 
the  most  energetic  section  of  them,  and  ultimately  by  a 
group  of  persons  "working  to  schemes  of  their  own," 
who  are  not  this  considerable  minority,   but  only  an 

infinitesimal  fraction  of  it.     These  two  oligarchies the 

larger  oligarchy  and  the  less— are  practically  to  settle 
the  conduct  of  affairs  between  them,  and  the  mass  of  the 
citizens— some  eighty  per  cent,  of  the  whole— are  for 
their  own  good,  which  they  cannot  understand  them- 
selves, to  submit  to  the  two  oligarchies  with  the  best 
grace  they  may. 


60      LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 

Conceptions  of  government  such  as  these  can  hardly 
be  described  as  amounting  to  "  a  deliberate  denunciation 
of  democracy  in  any  sense  of  the  word  " ;  but  they  do 
amount  to  a  repudiation — and  this  is  all  that  concerns 
us  here — of  democracy  in  its  pure  form.  They  amount 
to  a  negation  of  everything  supposed  to  be  represented 
by  the  formula  of  "one  man  one  vote,"  or  of  "equal 
influence  for  every  man  in  virtue  of  his  manhood  alone." 
They  amount  to  a  direct  negation  of  the  idea  that  the 
people,  taken  as  a  whole,  and  confronting  political  ques- 
tions as  an  aggregation  of  equal  units,  possess  any  com- 
mon, definite  and  effective  will  at  all.  They  amount  to 
a  direct  affirmation  that  an  oligarchic  element  is  essen- 
tial, and  that  no  general  will  could  possibly  exist 
without  it. 

We  need  not  for  the  moment  push  this  argument 
farther,  but  may  content  ourselves  with  noting  that  the 
experience  of  those  revolutionary  parties  which  aim  at 
realising  democracy  to  the  extremest  degree  which  is 
practicable,  has  compelled  them  in  practice,  and  grad- 
ually taught  them  in  theory,  not  only  to  recognise  that 
in  all  complex  government  an  element  of  oligarchy  is 
indispensable,  but  also  to  invoke  its  action  in  forms  as 
drastic  as  any  which  it  ever  tends  to  assume,  in  the  wider 
sphere  of  national  government,  or  of  the  State.  If,  then, 
even  professional  revolutionaries,  whose  war-cry  is  "  the 
will  of  the  people,"  have  discovered  from  experience 
that  the  people,  except  as  to  the  simplest  questions,  have 
no  definite  and  guiding  will  at  all,  unless  it  forms  itself 
under  the  influence,  and  expresses  itself  through  the 
action  of  an  oligarchy,  we  have  here  a  very  remarkable 
illustration  of  the  necessary  character  of  the  fact  that  a 
similar  situation  reveals  itself  in  the  case  of  national 
governments,  which  have  to  deal  with  problems  of  much 
greater  complexity  than  any  presenting  themselves  to 
mere  parties  of  protest. 

There  are,  however,  certain  democratic  optimists,  by 
no  means  revolutionary  in  the  extreme  sense  of  the  word, 
who,  though  recognising  that  the  pure  and  independent 
will  of  the  people  is  incapable  of  dictating  to  an  executive 
all  the  details  of  any  national  policy,  still  maintain  that 
a  popular  will  exists,  which  is  quite  sufficiently  definite 


POPULAR  OBJECTIVE 


61 


I 


for  the  broad  practical  purpose  of  turning  the  Executive 
into  its  humble  though  trusted  servant,  and  is  only 
hindered  from  doing  so  by  purely  accidental  impedi- 
ments. In  order  to  see  how  far  their  position  is  tenable, 
we  will  now  resume  the  main  line  of  our  argument,  which 
relates  to  the  nation  and  the  accepted  national  govern- 
ment, rather  than  the  internal  discipline  peculiar  to  this 
or  that  disaffected  and  disruptive  party. 


CHAPTER   VI 


DISAPPEARING   ILLUSIONS 


Our  general  argument  thus  far  may  be  briefly  re- 
stated thus.  It  starts  with  insisting  on  the  fact  that, 
m  communities  small  and  primitive  and  isolated,  pure 
democracy,  or  government  determined  by  the  sponta- 
neous wills  of  all,  is  not  only  a  possible  system,  but  is 
practically  the  system  which  exists;  and,  further,  that 
it  continues  to  exist  with  regard  to  those  fundamental 
questions  which,  in  all  communities,  simple  or  complex, 
are  the  same.  In  its  relation,  therefore,  to  questions 
such  as  these,  we  have  a  working  example  of  what  pure 
democracy  is,  by  which  we  can  measure  how  far,  with 
regard  to  others,  its  only  effective  action  diverges  from 
the  pure  type.  The  extent  and  nature  of  its  divergence 
may  be  indicated  once  again  by  a  series  of  simple 
illustrations  such  as  those  which  have  been  used  already. 

Let  us  suppose  that  all  the  voters  of  England  are 
assembled  in  some  vast  hall,  and  that  the  executive 
government  is  represented  in  the  person  of  a  single 
minister,  who  asks  for  their  corporate  will  as  to  the 
three  following  questions  which  he  puts  before  them  thus. 

(1)  "Of  late,  as  you  all  know,  there  have  been  con- 
stant attempts  at  incendiarism  by  the  use  of  matches 
and  kerosene.  Is  it  your  will  that  the  government  shall 
still  maintain  the  police-force  which,  as  you  all  know, 
has  proved  itself  able  to  frustrate  them  ? 

(2)  "Of  late,  as  you  all  know,  a  number  of  conflagra- 
tions have  been  caused,  and  might  any  day  be  caused 
again,  by  incendiary  bombs  dropped  from  German  air- 
ships. Is  it  your  will  that  the  government  shall  produce 
an  anti-aircraft  gun  which  will  shoot  down  airships  as 
easily  as  a  sportsman  shoots  a  pheasant  ? 

92 


POLITICAL  ENDS   AND   MEANS       63 

(3)  "  What  is  the  precise  construction,  or  what  arp  th^ 

'^  TK»  i  ^**  ^^^  government  shall  produce  ?  "  ^  ' 
acclama^[on  ?n!f\?"  '"''".'f  ***  «"<=«  ^e  answered  by 
he  asked  to  'hft  u  "  Y?,"'^  *^"  ^^^  '"'"'^ter  everything 

is  meant  bv  thl^'w '  ^^"  'H^  "'"^""^  ^^^'^  know  what 
IS  meant  by  the  word  "policeman,"  and  in  exDressin., 

.S^,flH"r"™°"r  ^^T  **>^'^  ^"l  that  the  polfce-  ore! 
should  be  mamtamed,  they  would  be  giving  a  deS 
order  which  could  at  once  be  carried  int^o  exfcution 

acclamation  ,ir"*""  ^^^'^  probably  be  answered  by 
f^^»n  ^  likewise,  and  this  would  tell  the  minister 

meTnhlthe'n'"*,^'  '''''''  *«  ^e  told.  It  woufd 
mean  that  the  people  spontaneously  willed  or  ordereH 
the  production  of  a  gun  of  some  sort.  ^ 

liut  a  gun  of  some  sort  is  practically  a  gun  of  no  sort 

"uid'c'hTs'Snrh*''  'Vl^''  ^""^"^  cfuldle&iitdy 
Kuiae  nis  actions,  he  would  have  to  so  on  to  th^  ih\i-A 

question;  and  if  he  put  this  to  his  audlence-^f  he  asked 

for  any  working  instructions  as  to  what  sort  of  eun  thU 

particular  gun  should  be-his  question  wou°deHcit« 

vXrrJld  ItaTe'ifv"*"'"'-.  Most"ofX  assSed 
voters  would  stare  at  him  m  awkward  silence      Some  nf 

auThinTa 'th'e'^^'^'Th"' /^'""^  '''''  the  "minisfeT^al 
would  com;  „  !^i     ^^"  ^'■°'"  *  miscellaneous  minority 
Zhu  .  fu       *  u?l'^y  °^  answers,  most  of  them  worthless 
whilst  those  which  were  not  worthless  were  so  conflicting 

corno'™?"'  '''^*  ""  '"iT"'*y  *=°"ld  invest  them  with  an? 

ad  uration    "  nnn"f    n     "  '"«t'"<=to'-s  the  very  familiar 
aajuration,     Don  t  all  speak  at  once." 

«ut  that  everybody  should  speak  at  once  is  the  verv 

thelcfthaVtW.*^'*''^  °i  T'  ^^™°--y  "emandranJ 
result  dl^frni'fi?'*."'^  1''"*'  •"  ^om^  <^ases  the  precise 

sUDDosinc  thl'-  "    '^*^'  ^y  '°"*'*^*  the  absurdity  of 
supposing  that  it  would,  or  ever  could,  do  so  in  others 

Of  the  three  typical  questions  which  we  have  ?ust  now 

ne'us' wS""'  *''•'"*  '''1^'  «  ^''"  whicTiiTponta" 
elicited  bv  the  !?"?•"''  ""'^'"^  ''  ^^'"Pl^te.  The  will 
bu?  it  is  incoi^Xi-  *^/'  spontaneous,  it  is  unanimous, 
which  Hefinir^  ^  '  "topping  far  short  of  the  point  at 
which  definite  orders  must  begin.    It  is,  therefore,  for 


I 


64      LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

purposes  of  practical  guidance,  a  nullity.  The  third 
question,  which  demands  that  this  incomplete  will  shall 
complete  itself,  fails  to  elicit  any  general  will  at  all. 
Between  will  and  action  there  must  be  a  further  will 
which  is  still  missing.  This  must  be  the  will  of  the 
minister  or  oligarchy  on  whose  behalf  he  speaks,  and  if 
the  construction  of  the  desired  weapon  is  ever  to  be 
accomplished  at  all,  the  only  will  which  can  render  its 
accomplishment  possible  is  not  any  will  which  the  many 
dictate  to  the  few.  It  is  essentially  one  which  the  few 
dictate  to  the  many,  and  which  the  many  must  somehow 
or  other  be  induced  to  make  their  own.  Or  to  put  the 
matter  in  more  general  terms,  in  proportion  as  political 
questions  recede  from  fundamental  simplicity,  the  power 
of  unalloyed  democracy  to  deal  with  such  questions 
evaporates,  and,  unless  it  is  quasi-chemically  changed 
by  combination  with  oligarchy,  ceases  practically  to 
exist. 

Now  the  general  truth  of  this  argument,  as  we  have 
seen  in  the  preceding  chapter,  has  come  to  be  admitted 
even  by  the  prophets  of  extreme  revolution.  In  what 
sense,  then,  can  it  be  contended  by  persons  of  more 
moderate  principles  that  the  people  as  a  homogeneous 
whole,  or  the  units  of  the  average  mass,  have,  in  spite 
of  all  appearances  to  the  contrary,  some  definite  will  of 
their  own,  complete  in  itself,  and  independent  of  any 
minority  whose  talents  may  happen  to  be  necessary  for 
the  transaction  of  detailed  business  ?  The  idea  which 
such  persons  have  at  the  back  of  their  minds  is  well 
expressed  by  a  writer  who  has  here  been  quoted  already 
as  able  to  state  bluntly  what  many  other  persons  mean. 
This  writer  maintains  that,  with  regard  to  political  ques- 
tions, no  matter  how  complex,  a  will  is  naturally  imma- 
nent in  the  units  of  the  average  mass,  which,  due  to  the 
likeness  of  one  unsophisticated  man  to  another,  deserves 
to  be  called  the  specific  will  of  the  people,  in  the  only 
important  sense  which  that  phrase  is  intended  to  suggest. 
That  is  to  say,  in  complex  cases  no  less  than  in  simple, 
the  mass  of  the  people,  as  distinct  from  special  minori- 
ties, have  a  definite  will  wuth  regard  to  "the  general 
objective  of  government,"  though  they  may  not  in 
complex  cases  be  able  to  prescribe  the  means. 


WILLS  AND   WISHES  65 

but^nobody  can  wnrlnH^  "r^""  ""^  ^"^^^^^  «^««n«.- 
wills  not  fn  lf«  "i  '  *""*  '^°^^y  ^o"ld  say  that  he 
Tgo  he  did      H.     **°°^  «ri**^'"«  ^l^i'^h  twenty  years 

and  have  a  loSTaTtL""''^  '^^',  ^^  "^^'^  ^et  to  Mars 
tn  ait  fl      T      ^    *^^  supposed  canals.     He  may  wish 

MinSr  BuJ"hf '"  l^u'''^'  ^"^  ^^^^^  ^  looTat  the 
no  means  exist  which  he  can  possS/'e^J^  or^I'tW 

Wfh"'"^  there  exist,  sU'as  Si  o^'i^ZnT^ 
be^  aXalTn^ThfrtLts'^t^^^^^  ^i'  -' 
wTiicn,   Whether  possible  or  absolutely  impossible    thp 

imaged  something Xh  the'Xn  sI'SSL^ STS 
or  believes  to  be  possible  by  "the  use  of  TSe"  °I 

"ttSr.^.Tt^" " ""- "" '°  •^™°.  " 

government  there  is  always  a  general  wUrwith^reS 
to  the  governmental  objective,  though  excrot  in  f^rJ 
smiple  cases  there  is  no  such  will  as  fo  mS.*  ifS 


^1 


►  n 


66       LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

obviously  intends  to  say — and  the  nature  of  his  argu- 
ment shows  this — is  that,  with  regard  to  the  objective, 
there  is  not  a  general  will,  but  only  some  general  wish. 
In  the  statement,  as  thus  amended,  there  is  doubtless  a 
certain  truth.     Let  us  consider  how  much  it  comes  to. 

Governments  and  their  actions  are  not  ends  in  them- 
selves. Free  Trade  is  not  an  end  in  itself.  Even  the 
legal  administration  of  justice  is  not  an  end  in  itself. 
Each  is  valued  only  as  conducing  to  some  end  or  objec- 
tive ulterior  to  it.  The  objective  in  the  former  case  is 
some  kind  of  prosperity.  In  the  latter  it  is  justice  itself, 
not  the  means  of  administering  it.  Every  voluntary 
action  which  man  is  capable  of  performing  is  performed, 
says  Aristotle,  for  the  sake  of  some  immediate  end ;  but 
all  such  ends,  except  one,  are  one  after  another  sub- 
sidiary to  some  end  which  is  beyond  themselves;  and 
the  ultimate  end  or  objective  which  alone  is  desired  for 
its  own  sake,  and  which  has  often  been  identified  with 
pleasure,  is  best  described,  says  Aristotle,  as  "  eudai- 
monia,"  or  happiness.  What  Aristotle  says  of  human 
action  in  general  is,  with  one  qualification,  true  of  the 
actions  performed  by  governments.  The  objective  of 
governmental  action  is  not  happiness  itself,  but  it  is  the 
next  thing  to  it.  It  is  best  described  as  Welfare,  or  the 
conditions  out  of  which  Happiness  is  most  likely  to  arise, 
in  so  far  as  regulation  by  an  external  power  can  produce 

them. 

The  statement  must,  therefore,  in  a  certain  sense  be 
true,  that,  with  regard  to  the  governmental  objective, 
all  the  units  of  the  average  mass,  and  those  indeed  of 
exceptional  classes  also,  do  spontaneously  wish  for  one 
and  the  same  thing;  for  any  one  man  may  be  trusted, 
"in  virtue  of  his  manhood  alone,"  to  wish  for  his  own 
welfare  just  as  devoutly  as  any  other  man.  But  a  wish 
of  this  kind,  in  so  far  as  it  has  any  relation  to  the  detailed 
possibilities  of  life  or  the  possible  action  of  any  govern- 
ment whatsoever,  is  general  and  unanimous  so  long  only 
as  it  is  vague.  Thus  if  each  citizen,  as  one  out  of  so 
many  millions,  were  asked  to  describe  in  detail  his  own 
conception  of  the  conditions  which  would  constitute 
welfare  for  himself,  the  first  condition  which  they  all 
would  agree  in  naming  would  no  doubt  be  an  income  of 


WILLS    AM)    WISHES  67 

weiraVorV^^'''^''^  ^  ^l^'i  ^^^*  P^^P^^'  ^hile  they 
Here  in  on.  '  '^''''^'^  probably  say  some  thousands.^ 
and't  fs  Quitp'n'''-n^  ^"  ^  ^^^y  ^^PPy  unanimity; 
^ethpr  Z  ^T'^^^  *^^*  ^  government  might  so  act 
(whether  by  grantmg  monopolies,  by  creating  new  posts 
or  otherwise)  as  to  realise  this  wish  in  the  caTe  of  a 

r^^Z"tt'V''\'^''''  ^"*  ''^'^  there  is  no  country 
^f  cf\  ^''''  "^^""^^  resources  could  provide  even  half 
many  ^imo^^^^    for  everybody,  it  i^  obvious  that  so 

a  general  conflict  of  wishes    like  th^  wiciT.e     »     ^' 
pushing  for  the  best  seattn 'fthSj  t^tr^Zn 
It-^n  ^^'^u^"'^   *°'   himself   a   something   whfchTf 

th.^\ndtK^rh7sV^^^^^^^^^ 

of  Inv  kinJ  r^  '"°^/"?^  °"'y  ^«  government^rac^i^n 
ol  any  kind  is  competent  to  secure  for  all:  and  let  us 

consider  how  far  in  detail  their  wishes  are  hkelv  to 
coincide,  and  thus  coalesce  into  any  generalwil   which 
to  a  government  waiting  for  orders,  would  bL  cllar  or 
even  approximately  intelligible. 

In  a  simple  society,  or  one  relatively  simnle    which 

cuTtri  Zu^"^-  ''■°™  l""'  ^""*'"g  «t«i  3  thetgrt 
cultural,  welfare  is  spontaneously  identified  in  the  mind« 

of  most  of  the  citizens  with  the  tenure  by  each  of  a 

sufficient  quantity  of  land,   which  tenure  shall  be  so 

secured  to  him  by  law  that  his  sole  means  of  earning 

a  livelihood  shall  never  be  taken  away  from  him      All 

such  men    therefore,  in  wishing  for  their  own  welfare 

wish  for  the  enactment  or  maintenance  of  some  pari 

ticular  land-law,  the  essential  content  of  which  can  be 

grasped  and  expressed  by  everybody;  and  the  expression 

W.1  a„7„rcli  Vat^ajrol'^r.l:!':^  T 'f ""'  i^*  «'"''« 

at  the  rate  of  £9^  a  month,  T  m"re  than  &"»"  ''^"""•^t'^  "«g«? 


68      LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

of  it,  as  addressed  to  the  government,  transforms  a 
general  wish  into  a  true  general  will.  It  must,  however, 
be  observed  that,  simple  though  this  case  is,  there  is 
one  element  in  it  which  is  not  at  first  sight  apparent. 
If  a  government  in  obedience  to  such  a  will  is  to  render 
each  man's  right  to  a  given  plot  of  land  inalienable,  it 
can  do  so  only  by  depriving  him  of  the  right  to  quit  it ; 
and  so  long  as  a  society  consists  mainly  of  cultivators 
this  deprivation  will  be  hardly  so  much  as  noticed,  for 
no  one  would  wish  to  run  away  from  his  sole  means  of 
subsistence.  But  if  trade  and  manufactures  begin,  as 
they  did  in  mediaeval  England,  to  offer  the  cultivator 
chances  of  greater  gain  than  any  which  he  can  hope  for 
whilst  he  is  tethered  to  the  clods  of  a  few  acres,  his  idea 
of  welfare  (as  happened  in  mediaeval  England)  begins 
to  be  complicated  by  the  intrusion  of  a  new  element. 
To  the  wish  for  security  is  added  a  wish  for  freedom. 
Hence  a  further  wish  arises  in  a  growing  number  of 
minds  that  a  law,  which  can  only  secure  the  means  of 
subsistence  for  a  man  by  chaining  the  man  to  one  means 
of  subsistence,  shall  be  superseded  by  a  law  which  will 
render  this  connection  dissoluble,  and  allow  him  to 
choose,  if  he  can  find  it,  a  means  of  subsistence  for  him- 
self. At  the  same  time,  the  new  law,  although  it  would 
have  its  advantages,  would  obviously  deprive  him  of 
those  secured  by  the  old;  and  every  interested  person, 
before  his  wish  could  mature  itself  into  a  will  that  the 
new  law  should  be  enacted,  would  have  to  balance 
against  its  promised  advantages  the  advantages  it  would 
take  away — to  calculate  which  alternative  would  yield 
him  a  net  gain  :  and  different  minds  would  be  certain 
to  work  out  such  a  sum  differently. 

This  case  is  typical.  In  any  complex  society,  out  of 
all  the  many  wishes  which,  in  the  mind  of  every  average 
man,  vaguely  make  up  the  general  idea  of  welfare,  there 
are  few  which,  if  fulfilled  completely,  would  not  be  found 
inconsistent   with   the   complete   fulfilment   of   others.^ 

1  Here,  again,  is  a  fact  which  has  been  strikingly  illustrated  by 
incidents  of  the  Russian  revolution.  The  dockers  at  Archangel  refused 
to  work  for  more  than  six  hours  a  day  or  for  more  than  three  days  a 
week.  The  docks  were  blocked  with  cargoes  of  coal  and  other  neces- 
saries, which  could  not  be  unloaded.     By  the  strikers  themselves  fuel 


i 


IMPOTENCE  OF  MERE  WISHES      69 

The  wished-for  objective  is  not  a  single  condition,  but 
a  plexus  of  many  each  of  which  must  be  limited  by  the 
co-existence  of  others,  in  order  that  all  together  mav 
produce  the  result,  welfare.  If  the  peopk  then  In 
respect  of  their  several  complete  objectives  are  to  have 
any  common  will  which  they  are  able  to  impose  on  the 

ITd^T^  J^'l"'"  '""^^  \'  «  ""'^"^'y  --P"^  thing! 
and  If  It  IS  to  be  expressed  in  a  manner  which  anv 

be  equivalent  to  a  picture  representing  welfare  divided 

confi^  LTP'rVPe"^^'  '^'  P°^'«°"'  dimensions  an5 
Xf^Z       ""  ""^  ^^""^  ^""S  indicated  with  such  precision 

accorSniv'^' F.?r?{:*  "^V  ^'  ^^^'  *°  ^^^P^  its  conduct 
ftlZtr^'A  ^"T**'-'"'  '*  *  P**=*"'«  «f  this  kind,  with  all 
Its  complex  details,  is  really  to  represent  the  will  of  the 
average  mass,  all  the  units  of  the  mass  must,  poVta- 
neously  and  without  prompting,  draw  it-each  fo?  him- 
self-in  precisely  the  same  way.  But  there  are  two 
reasons  why  such  a  result  is  impossible.  In  the  first 
place,  a  picture  of  this  elaborate  kind  would  have  to  be 
drawn  from  a  conception  no  less  elaborate,  which  the 
^nd  tL  r''"'^/!^'*  f'^-^^dy.  thought  out  and  matured^ 

tfr,}  I*'"  ''•  ^i"?"^^*  r^*l"''^^  f"'-  this  purpose  would 
be  not  only  so  intricate,  but  would  also  deal  with  quan- 
tities so  incapable  of  exact  measurement,  that  the  con- 
ception thus  formed  of  welfare  by  any  one  mind  would 
rarely  coincide,  even  m  its  main  details,  with  that 
formed  by  any  other.  In  the  second  place,  whatever 
the  conception  of  welfare  in  a  man's  own  mind  may  be 

'X7Z\  !f  fi™?/*  ""^f^  ^l^"  ^^^  httle  resemblance  to 
the  only  definite  picture  by  means  of  which  he  would 
be  able  to  communicate  it  to  a  government  or  to  anv- 

would  be  like  a  drawing  of  its  mother  by  a  child,  who! 

was  hardly  obtainable.  The  workmen  in  one  great  factors  insisted  on 
an  increase  of  wa^es  in  the  ratio  of  1  to  6.  The  value  of  thrtnt^^ 
product  out  of  which  alone  their  wages  could  come    had  presenttv 

to"ecure 'l-no?  1''%'"  '-fi  '-'-'^"'^V'''^  demanded  a.^Cn^S 
Ihem  f?nf  I  ?       P  *  ^^t''  Pr^"t'y  foond  that  their  boots  cost 

JlVL  I  P  ••  '^•'^^"t-"'  *,»•»  demanded  communism  in  land,  were 
aghast  when  gram  was  demanded  of  them  for  certain  other  workers  and 


70      LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

being  lost  in  a  crowd,  should  hand  it  to  a  policeman  in 
order  that  he  might  be  able  to  find  her.  If  the  police- 
man appeared  at  the  door  of  the  child's  nursery  after- 
wards with  a  creature  whose  features  and  proportions 
were  like  those  of  the  child's  drawing — a  creature  with 
legs  like  sticks,  with  one  eye  in  its  forehead,  and  another 
eye  in  its  cheek — the  child  would  certainly  exclaim  that 
this  was  not  its  mother,  but  the  devil.  The  truth  of  the 
matter  is  that  for  any  man  to  analyse  accurately  his  own 
conception  of  the  welfare  for  which  he  himself  wishes, 
and  express  it  in  terms  intelligible  to  any  other  human 
being,  is  a  task  requiring  talents  of  an  exceedingly  rare 
order.  The  task  of  inducing  millions  of  men  to  unify, 
for  governmental  purposes,  their  various  conceptions  of 
what  they  wish  for,  by  adopting  a  single  conception 
which  is  not  identical  with  any  of  these,  is  a  task  re- 
quiring talent  of  a  rarer  order  still ;  and  it  is  only  when 
this  latter  task  has  been  accomplished  with  something 
like  substantial  success  that  a  multitude  of  wishes, 
previously  vague,  unlike  in  their  content,  and  ineffec- 
tual, can  be  converted  into  a  demand  for  a  single 
set  of  conditions,  all  of  them  absolutely  specific,  and 
thus  be  made  to  constitute  a  cumulative  and  effective 
will. 

Those,  then,  who  claim  that  the  units  of  the  average 
mass,  though  they  cannot  dictate  means  to  the  govern- 
ment or  the  executive  oligarchy,  have  nevertheless,  with 
regard  to  the  governmental  objective,  some  corporate 
will  of  their  own  which  a  government  could  be  ordered 
to  execute,  absolutely  ignore  the  essential  point  at  issue. 
It  is  true,  and  has  been  said  already,  that  just  as  will 
must  always  precede  voluntary  action,  so  must  wish 
always  precede  will.  The  very  idea  of  government,  the 
very  idea  of  a  people  to  be  governed,  presupposes  on  the 
part  of  the  people  one  common  wish  at  all  events — that 
is  to  say,  the  wish  to  live;  and  the  wish  to  live,  owing 
to  the  constitution  of  the  human  body,  is  primarily 
identified  with,  and  is  indistinguishable  from,  the  wish 
for  food.  Now  if  all  men  were  congregated  on  an  abso- 
lutely barren  rock,  the  wish  for  food  would  be  a  wish 
and  a  wish  only.  No  action  could  follow  it,  and  the 
human  race  would  die.     Nature,  however,  has  taught 


I  . 


I 


COMPLEXITY   OF  WELFARE         71 

men  for  countless  thousands  of  years  that  this  wish  can 
be  satisfied  by  the  immemorial  practice  of  agriculture; 
but  the  wish  for  food  is  not  agriculture  itself,  although 
there  would  be  no  agriculture  without  the  wish  for  food. 
Agriculture  is  a  wish  for  food-stuffs  which  has  translated 
Itself  into  a  will  to  produce  them  by  certain  means,  such 
as  ploughing,  sowing,  draining,  selection  of  seeds,  rota- 
tion of  crops,  and  so  forth.  Similarly,  the  wish  for 
welfare  m  a  highly  civilised  State  is  not  political  govern- 
ment though  there  would  be  no  political  government 
if  nobody  wished  for  welfare.  Welfare,  in  so  far  as 
political  action  can  secure  it,  is  in  any  complex  society 
a  plexus  of  intricate  and  interconnected  means,  each  of 
which  must  represent  some  will  as  definite  as  itself ;  and 
If  each  of  these  means  is  to  represent  a  will  of  the  people 
generally,  each  must  represent  an  indefinite  number  of 
wills,  all  so  exactly  unified  that  they  practically  amount 
to  one.  For,  just  as  the  same  pig  can  be  killed  in  one 
way  only,  so  this  plexus  of  means  which,  so  far  as 
government  can  affect  the  matter,  constitutes  welfare  in 
Its  only  possible  form,  cannot  in  any  one  country  and  at 
any  given  moment  be,  even  in  the  smallest  detail,  other 
than  the  thing  it  is. 

If,  then,  in  order  that  any  particular  plexus  may  be 
definitely  willed  by  the  people  to  the  exclusion  of  all 
others,  it  is  necessary  (as  most  serious  democrats  are 
now  coming  to  admit)  that  the  means  comprised  in  this 
plexus,  or  at  all  events  the  larger  part  of  them,  shall  be 
hrst  devised  by  the  few,  and  the  people  in  some  way  or 
other  induced  to  will  the  adoption  of  them,  we  are 
brought  by  a  new  route  back  to  the  old  conclusion.  The 
people,  except  with  regard  to  simple  and  fundamental 
questions,  have,  apart  from  an  oligarchy,  no  place  in 
the  arena  of  political  life  whatever.  The  contention,  in 
short,  that  the  people,  without  any  oligarchy  to  guide 
them,  have  a  definite  will  of  their  own  as  to  a  highly 
complex  objective,  though  they  have,  apart  from  an 
oligarchy,  no  such  will  as  to  the  means,  is  a  contradiction 
m  terms.  It  is  a  contradiction  which  is  disguised  by, 
and  due  to,  a  confusion  of  wish  with  will;  for  in  the 
world  of  political  government,  as  in  the  world  of  action 
generally,  the  bald  truth  is  this— that  a  wish  which  is 


72       LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

not  identified  with  a  will  as  to  definite  means  is  not  a 
will  at  all. 

Nobody  in  his  senses  can  deny  that  such  is  the  case 
with  regard  to  certain  governmental  means  or  objectives 
when  these  are  taken  individually — such,  for  example, 
as  safety  and  an  anti-aircraft  gun.  Welfare  as  a  general 
objective  is  not  only  no  exception  to  this  rule,  but  it  is, 
on  the  contrary,  the  crowning  and  the  all-comprehensive 
illustration  of  it. 

The  theory,  however,  of  a  phantom  objective,  the 
realisation  of  which  can  be  definitely  willed  by  the  people 
though  they  cannot  dictate  the  means  by  which  such  a 
result  may  be  accomplished,  is  not  the  less  interesting 
because  it  is  altogether  illusory.  On  the  contrary,  it  is 
more  so ;  for  it  is  simply  the  condensed  expression  of 
a  vague  idea  or  feeling  which  the  theory  of  pure  demo- 
cracy tends  to  develop  in  the  consciousness  of  the 
average  man.  That  theory  means  for  each  average  man 
who  accepts  it  that  there  is  no  individual  in  the  world 
whose  wishes  are  more  important  than  his  own,  and  no 
individual  who,  if  all  men  had  their  rights,  would  have 
greater  power  than  he  to  impose  his  own  wishes  on  the 
government.  It  thus  engenders  in  him  the  feeling 
(which  is  far  more  intimate  and  less  open  to  regulation 
than  the  thought)  that  welfare,  as  wished  for  by  himself, 
he  being  secretly  the  hero  of  it,  is  the  special  kind  of 
welfare  which  the  government  ought  to  realise. 

A  homely  illustration  of  this  general  fact  may  be  found 
in  a  letter  which  was  addressed  to  an  American  journal 
by  a  workman — an  immigrant  from  Austria — after  some 
prolonged  experience  of  affairs  in  the  great  Republic. 
"I  was  brought  up,"  he  said,  "in  the  most  aristocratic 
country  in  the  world,  and  I  have  come  here  to  the  most 
democratic.  But  what  good  has  all  this  democracy 
done  me  ?  I  am  no  more  up  to  the  top  of  the  tree  than 
I  ever  was."  This  man's  ingenuous  complaint  was  an 
expression  of  what  millions  of  other  men  more  or  less 
vaguely  feel.  Each  of  these  others,  animated  by  the 
democratic  idea  that  he  has  no  superior  either  in  rights 
or  power,  wishes  to  be  at  or  near  the  top  of  the  tree 
somehow.  He  expects  the  government  somehow  or 
other  to  put  him  there;  and  since  the  top  of  the  tree, 


I 


I 


IMPOSSIBLE   EXPECTATIONS         73 

from  the  nature  of  things,  can  be  occupied  by  a  few  men 
only,  each  member  of  the  majority,  let  the  government 
do  what  It  may,  will  feel  that  he  is  defrauded  by  it  of 
his  own  democratic  due.  The  more  democratic  a 
government  may  be  in  semblance,  and  the  more  profuse, 
as  a  consequence,  it  is  in  its  popular  promises,  the 
greater  is  the  discrepancy  between  its  promises  and  the 
utmost  it  IS  able  to  perform.  The  more  widely  amongst 
the  governed  does  a  sense  of  grievance  diffuse  itself— 
a  mood  of  unrest  and  suspicion— which  makes  it  in- 
creasingly difficult  for  any  executive  oligarchy  to  secure 
a  democratic  assent  to  such  limited  measures  as  alone 
can,  when  the  time  for  action  comes,  be  put  before  the 
people  by  any  statesmen  as  practicable.  In  a  word 
the  broad  result  of  the  theory  of  pure  governmental 
democracy,  especially  with  reference  to  the  general 
governmental  objective,  is  to  render  the  people  restive 
by  popularising  impossible  expectations. 

That  such  is  the  case  is  shown  clearly  enough  by  the 
course  of  modern  and  comparatively  modern  history. 
If  we  take  it  roughly  that  the  ideas  at  the  root  of  modern 
pohtical  democracy  first  became  widely  effective  towards 
the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century,  we  may  say  that 
such  a  mood  of  restiveness  has  from  the  very  first,  in 
one  country  or  another,  accompanied  all  attempts  at 
translating    the    conception    of    pure    democracy    into 
practice.     The  true  content  of  such  moods,   however, 
has  been  not  precisely  what  it  may  seem  to  have  been. 
It  has  not  amounted,  and  it  does  not  amount,  to  a  mere 
uneasy  protest  that  this  or  that  particular  government 
(such  as  those  which  formed  and  dissolved  themselves 
during  the  course  of  the  French  Revolution)  was  not 
governmental  democracy  in  its  pure  and  proper  form. 
It  comprised  from  the  first  the  germs  of  a  wider  judg- 
ment, to  the  effect  that  no  democracy,  the  scope  of  which 
IS  purely  political,  can  do  anything  to  secure  the  con- 
ditions  which   the   idea   of  democracy   suggests.      The 
Austrian  immigrant  in  America  who  attacked  political 
democracy  at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century 
because  it  had  not  enabled  him  to  reach  the  "top  of  the 
tree,"  did  but  express  a  feeling  which  had  developed 
itself,  as  we  shall  see  hereafter,  when  the  French  Revolu- 


74       LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

tion  was  merely  a  maturing  dream.  Before  the  more 
immediate  effects  of  that  movement  had  spent  theni- 
selves  Babeuf  had  boldly  declared  that  no  purely  poli- 
tical revolutions  could  have  for  the  masses  of  the  people 
any  meaning  whatever,  and  lost  his  head  in  consequence 
for  conspiring  against  the  French  Republic.  During  the 
earlier  years  of  the  nineteenth  century,  to  mention  a  few 
names  only,  (George  Rapp,  a  German;  St.  Simon  and 
Fourrier,  Frenchmen;  and  Robert  Owen,  an  English- 
man,) whilst  political  democracy  was  by  a  large  majority 
still  regarded  as  the  key  to  a  near  millennium,  each 
in  their  several  ways,  and  supported  by  numerous  fol- 
lowers, denounced  it  as  wholly  incapable  of  fulfilling  its 
own  promises.  What  these  men  and  others  said  in 
effect  was  this  :  ''The  great  thing  the  people  want,  and 
the  only  thing  about  which  they  really  care,  is  not  to 
vote  equally,  but  to  live  equally ;  and  equal  living  is  a 
thing  which  political  democracy  by  itself  does  not  give, 
and  does  not  even  tend  to  give  them." 

From  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  onwards 
this  kind  of  criticism  has  continued  to  increase  in 
volume,  and  to  seek  for  justification  in  an  increasing 
number  of  illustrations.  Thus,  in  France,  those  who 
had  hoped  most  from  democracy  in  political  govern- 
ment, complain  to-day  that  it  has,  as  a  working  system, 
replaced  a  noblesse  by  a  bourgeoisie  far  more  oppres- 
sive; whilst  in  America,  where  political  democracy  has 
been  attempted  on  the  largest  scale,  conditions  are  more 
unequal  than  in  any  other  country  in  the  world. 

But  the  judgments  and  the  mood  of  mind  which  such 
criticism  expresses  have  been  far  from  taking  the  turn 
which  at  first  sight  might  have  seemed  likely.  Though 
directed  against  democracy  as  a  principle  which  vainly 
attempts  to  realise  itself  so  long  as  it  is  applied  to  prob- 
lems of  mere  political  government,  they  have  not  been 
directed  against  the  principle  of  pure  democracy  as 
such.  Their  actual  meaning  has  gradually  developed 
into  one,  which  is  merely  the  meaning  foreshadowed  by 
men  like  Babeuf  and  Owen — that  the  democratic  prin- 
ciple has  failed  to  accomplish  its  promises  hitherto, 
because  it  has  sought  to  display  itself  in  too  narrow  a 
field.     It  has  followed  men  to  their  doorsteps,  but  has 


CHANGES   OF   POPULAR  MOOD       75 

K^^^^'.'^^l''  ^^^y  ^^""^  ^^'^^^-    Its  action  has  stopped 

tTf^^  7^^'^  ^^^"^^'  *^  b^^^^-     "  democracy  is 

hlrir  T  '"^  ^  ^""^^"^^  ^^  ^^"^^  ^^^i^g'  it  "^^st  mainly 
be  realised  m  connection  with  the  affairs  of  private  life, 

such  as  industrial  production,  the  distribution  of  indus- 
trial products,  and  the  social  interests  and  intercourse 
to  which  such  distribution  ministers. 

The  word  "Denjocracy,"  when  used  in  this  extended 
sense,  is  as  has  been  said  already,  commonly  distin- 
guished by  the  epithet  "industrial ''  or  "social,"  or  by 
both,  these  being  taken  to  indicate  two  substantially 
different  though  closely  associated  things.  Each  of 
these  will  here  be  considered  in  its  proper  order.  Mean- 
while, as  to  democracy  in  the  sphere  of  political  govern- 
ment, the  results  of  our  analysis  may  be  recapitulated 

Pure   political   democracy,   or  government  in   which 
every  citizen  plays  really  an  equal  part,  is  not  in  itself, 
or  under  all  circumstances,  impossible.    On  the  contrary 
It  is  the  type  of  government  which  in  certain  communi- 
ties actually  tends  to  exist.      These  are  communities 
which  are  minute,  primitively  simple  in  their  conditions, 
and  isolated.     In  such  communities  pure  democracy  is 
possible,  and  indeed  inevitable,  because  all  the  questions 
are  simple   which  the  government  has  to  settle,   and 
everybody  tends  to  think  about  them  in  virtually  the 
same  way.     Thus,  according  to  Caesar,  the  Gallic  tribes 
of  his  day  were  democracies  in  times  of  peace,   and 
oligarchies  m  times  of  war;  for  in  times  of  war  alone 
was  there  any  scope  or  need  for  the  leadership  of  men 
more   sagacious   and   more   courageous   than   the   rest 
further,  since  m  all  communities,  no  matter  what  their 
character,  certain  simple  questions  persist  as  the  basis 
of  associated  life,  there  is  an  element  of  pure  democracy 
in  all  governments  alike.     In  proportion,  however    as 
communities  increase  in  size,  advance  in  civilisation,  and 
come  to  have  chronic  deahngs  with  communities  other 
than  themselves,  the  problems  of  government  multiply 
and  most  of  them  become  more  complex.    With  regard 
to  niost  of  them  there  is  room  for  endless  differences  of 
opinion.     The  mere  task  of  considering  them  carefully 
IS  congenial  only  to  men  whose  mental  energy  is  some- 


76       LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

what  above  the  average,  whilst  the  task  of  solving  them 
successfully  calls  for  talents  and  knowledge  of  special 
and  unusual  kinds.  For  these  reasons,  two  results  are 
inevitable.  In  the  first  place,  the  business  of  dealing 
actively  with  political  problems  at  all  tends,  from  the 
mere  fact  of  its  being  laborious,  to  pass  into  the  hands 
of  the  more  energetic  minority,  this  body  being  thus  a 
sort  of  oligarchic  nebula.  In  the  second  place,  since  the 
solution  of  these  complex  problems  is  not  only  laborious 
but  difficult,  out  of  this  large  and  nebular  oligarchy 
smaller  oligarchies  nucleate  themselves,  which  represent, 
not  energy  only,  but  energy  combined  with  various 
unusual  talents,  until  at  last  some  group  is  reached  (or 
on  critical  occasions  some  one  individual)  under  whose 
will  the  wills  of  the  nebular  oligarchy  range  themselves, 
and  are  transmitted  by  oratory  or  by  other  means  to 
the  mass.  . 

Such  is  the  process  which,  in  every  highly  civilised 
country   possessing   a   popular   constitution,    is   taking 
place  under  our  very  eyes.    This  persistence  of  oligarchic 
action  is  not,  as  some  thinkers  contend,  due  to  any 
defect  in  the  details  of  mere  constitutional  mechanism. 
On  the  contrary,  it  becomes  more  and  more  pervasive 
in  proportion  as  such  details  conform  in  outer  semblance 
to  the  democratic  ideal.     It  reveals  itself,  as  we  have 
seen,  in  the  internal  organisation  of  even  those  sectional 
parties  whose  avowed  aim  is  to  raise  popular  power  to 
a  maximum.     It  is  due  to  the  permanent  facts  of  human 
nature  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  inevitably  complex 
character  of  all  civilised   societies  on  the  other.     The 
case,  indeed,  may  be  summed  up  thus.     Nobody  would 
contend,  in  dealing  with  the  affairs  of  any  great  country 
or  empire,  whether  in  times  of  peace  or  war,  that  all 
exceptional    intellect,    all    exceptional    knowledge,    all 
exceptional   sagacity   and   strength   of   character   were 
superfluous.     If  talents  like  these,  then,  are  not  abso- 
lutely  superfluous,   it   follows  that   oligarchy   of   some 
kind  is  a  necessity ;  for  talent  as  applied  to  government 
can  exert  itself  in  one  way  only — namely  that  of  an 
influence  exercised  by  a  few  men  over  many.     The  most 
talented  man  in  the  world  might  be  a  Caesar,  a  Napoleon 
or  a  Lincoln  within  the  limits  of  his  own  bedroom ;  but, 


THE   INDUSTRIAL   OBJECTIVE       77 

if  he  could  influence  nobody  besides  himself,  his  talents 
would  be  paralysed  if  he  sat  as  the  chairman  of  a  parish 
council. 

The  paralysis  of  oligarchy  would  be,  therefore,  the 
paralysis  of  talent.  It  must,  however,  be  clearly  recog- 
nised—for here  we  have  a  complementary  fact  which 
IS  no  less  important— that  the  activity  of  oligarchy  is 
not  the  paralysis  of  democracy.  It  leaves  democracy, 
in  relation  to  simple  and  fundamental  questions,  un- 
touched ;  whilst  with  regard  to  the  composite  questions 
which  civilisation  adds  to  these,  it  provides  the  only 
means  by  which,  in  any  definite  form,  it  is  practically 
possible  for  the  principle  of  democracy  to  express  itself. 

We  will  now  extend  our  inquiry,  and  consider  whether 
the  expulsion  of  oligarchy  and  the  establishment  of  pure 
democracy  are  projects  more  practicable  in  the  spheres 
of  industrial  and  social  life  than  they  are  in  the  sphere 
of  politics,  as  the  word  "politics"  is  still  commonly 
understood. 


BOOK   II 

DEMOCRACY  AND  TECHNICAL  PRODUCTION 

CHAPTER   I 

THE   DEFINITION   OF   INDUSTRY 

The  idea  of  extending  the  application  of  the  demo- 
cratic principle  beyond  the  scope  of  such  government 
as  is  commonly  called  political  is  in  itself  no  novelty. 
The  speeches  which  Aristophanes  in  his  play,  Women  in 
Parliament,  puts  into  the  mouths  of  his  agitators  male 
and  female  correspond  almost  word  for  word  with  count- 
less actual  speeches  which  are  made  on  socialist  plat- 
forms and  at  street  corners  to-day.     This  idea,  how- 
ever, in  the  forms  with  which  the  world  is  now  familiar 
is   distinctively   modern    in   respect    of    its   theoretical 
details,  and  also  of  the  extent  to  which  it  has  become 
prevalent.    Democracy  to-day,  in  the  extended  sense 
of  the  word,  is,  as  we  have  seen  already,  commonly 
described   as   "Industrial"   Democracy,   or   "Social." 
These  two  epithets  are  often  used  interchangeably ;  but 
implications  of  the  latter,  as  we  shall  see  more  fully 
hereafter,  differ  from  those  of  the  former  in  the  fact 
that  they  are  more  comprehensive,   and  less  easy  to 
define.     It   will   be   necessary,   therefore,   to   consider 
Industrial  Democracy  first,  and  rigidly  exclude,  in  doing 
so,  all  reference  to  activities  which  do  not  pertain  to  the 
process  of  actual  industry  itself.     How  important  pre- 
cision with  regard  to  this  point  is,  will  be  seen  from  the 
following  statement  made  by  a  well-known   socialist, 
which  we  may  take  here  as  our  text. 

"Every  day,"  says  Mr.  Sidney  Webb,  "there  is  a 
growing  consensus  of  opinion  that  the  inevitable  out- 
come of  democracy  is  the  control  of  the  main  instru- 

78 


RECOVERY  OF  PRODUCTS  79 

ments  of  production  by  the  people  themselves,  and  the 
consequent  recovery  of  what  John  Stuart  Mill  calls  '  the 
enormous  share  which  the  possessors  of  industry'  are 
able  to  take  of  'the  total  produce.'  "  Now,  this  short 
statement,  which  seems  simple  enough,  is  in  reality  a 
combmation  of  three. 

The  first  is  to  the  effect  that,  though  the  actual  process 
of  production  is  carried  on  mainly  by  a  body  called  "  the 
people  themselves,"  they  get  at  present  only  a  part  of 
what  they  produce,  the  remainder  being  appropriated 
by  persons  who  are  mere  "possessors  "  of  the  materials 
on  which,  and  the  great  mechanisms  and  appliances  by 
which,  the  actual  producers  operate. 

The  second  is  to  the  effect  that  if  the  democratic 
principle  were  really  applied  to  industry,  the  present 
privileges  of  these  mere  "possessors  "  would  cease,  and 
the  people  themselves  "  would  be  able,  in  accordance 
with  their  several  efficiencies,  to  secure  that  "share" 
of  their  products  which  is  now  unjustly  withheld  from 
them. 

The  third  is  to  the  effect  that  this  share  is  "enor- 
mous." 

Now  it  is  obvious  that,  even  if  all  these  statements 
were  correct,  there  would  be  no  integral  connection 
between   the   first   two   and   the   third.      Whether  the 

share      alleged  to  be  withheld  is  so  great  as  to  merit 
the  name      enormous  "  or  no,  is  a  question  which  can 
be  determined  by  statistical  inquiry  only,  and  it  might 
conceivably  be  answered  in  one  way  or  another  without 
the  hrst   statement   or  the   second   being   in  point   of 
principle  affected.     But  the  difference  between  the  first 
S?  uu        s<=<:0"d   is   even   more   fundamental.    As  Mr, 
Webb  puts  these,  they  are  indeed  united  by  the  implica- 
tion that  production  and  distribution  should  in  justice 
go  hand  m  hand,  and  that  no  man  should  get  more  than 
he  produces,  and  no  man  should  get  less.     But  the  fact 
that  these  two  processes  are  in  their  nature  separable, 
is  shown  by  the  socialists  themselves,  whose  chief  com- 
plaint is  that  under  the  existing  system  the  facts  of 
individual  production  and  the  principles  of  distribution 
are  separated. 

When  Mr.  Webb  starts  with  saying  that  the  inevitable 


80      LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

outcome  of  democracy  is  the  transference  of  the  control 
of  industry  or  production  to  the  people,  and  that  this 
transference  is  to  be  accomplished  by  puttmg  the  people 
in  possession  of  the  great  modern  mstruments,  which 
must  include  the  raw  materials,  of  production,  he  shows 
clearly  enough  what  industry  is  understood  to  be.     In- 
dustry is  the  fashioning  by  men  of  the  crude  gifts  of 
nature  into  finished  goods  with  the  aid  of  appropriate 
implements,  and  the  transport  of  these  goods  to  the 
shops  or  other  places  where  they  pass  at  length  into  the 
hands  of  the  final  user  or  consumer.     But  the  process 
which  determines  what  share  of  the  goods,  when  they 
are  finished,  shall  pass  into  the  hands  of  one  class  of 
consumer  or  another  has  no  effect  on  the  processes  by 
which   goods   of   any   given   kind   are   produced.      ihe 
income,  or,  as  Mill  calls  it,  ''the  total  produce      of  a 
nation  may  be  compared  to  a  great  plum-pudding  of 
specified  weight  and  quality.     Now,  if  nobody  was  going 
to  eat  it  or  get  any  share  of  it  at  all,  it  is  perfectly  true 
that  the  pudding  would  never  have  been  made ;  but  the 
fact  that  it  is  there,  and  ready  to  be  eaten  by  somebody, 
is  the  primary  fact  that  Mr.   Webb's  statement  pre- 
supposes.    Such  being  the  case,  then,  the  processes  in- 
volved in  the  production  of  it  will  have  consisted  of  a 
number  of  operations,  such  as  the  getting  together  of 
certain  given  materials— flour,  suet,  sugar,  spice,  raisins 
and  so  forth— the  mixing  of  them  in  given  quantities,  and 
the  boiling  of  them  for  a  given  time ;  which  operations 
performed   by  human  hands   might   be   accurately   re- 
corded in  a  series  of  photographic  diagrams ;  and  these 
operations,  which  are  a  type  of  what  is  meant  by  in- 
dustry, would,  if  the  pudding  were  to  be  produced  at 
all,  be  in  themselves  the  same,  no  matter  whether  this 
man  or  that  man  should   eat   more  or  less  than   the 

rest. 

This  is  what  the  doctrinaires  of  Industrial  Democracy 
forget,  and  the  origin  of  their  error  is  not  far  to  seek. 
Assuming  as  they  do  that  a  few  men,  under  existing 
conditions,  tend  to  swallow  up  most  of  the  national 
income  between  them,  they  fix  their  attention  on  the 
fact  that  great  masses  of  men  engaged  in  industrial  work 
are   already  able,   by   forming  themselves  into  Trade 


DEMOCRACY  IN  PRODUCTION       81 

Unions,  to  secure  in  the  form  of  wages  a  larger  share  of 
what  Mill  calls  ''the  total  produce"  than  the  "pos- 
sessors "  or  the  employers  would  have  conceded  to  them 
had    compulsion    of    this    kind    been    absent.     Hence, 
to  such  thinkers  it  seems  that  we  here  have  a  living 
example  of  industrial  democracy  beginning  to  come  into 
Its  own.     Now  such  thinkers  may  be  perfectly  right  in 
claiming  for  the  Unionist  movement  a  democratic  char- 
acter of  some  sort,  but  the  error  which  they  commit  is 
this.     They  assume  that  because  the  action  of  Unions 
as  a  means  of  augmenting  wages  is  the  action  of  men 
who  happen  to  be  engaged  in  industry,  it  must  of  neces- 
sity be  in  itself  industrial.     They  might  just  as  well 
argue  that  if  some  important  fortress  had  been  captured 
by  the  gallantry  of  a  regiment  made  up  wholly  of  post- 
impressionist  painters,  the  feat  was  a  triumph  of  the 
principles  of  a  particular  school  of  painting.     Let  us 
suppose  that  the  English  dyeing  industry,  having  suf- 
fered for  years  from  the  scientific  competition  of  Ger- 
many, suddenly  gets  the  better  of  its  rival  through  the 
discovery  and  perfecting  of  some  secret  and  hitherto 
undreamed-of  process.     The  wage-earners  employed  in 
an  industry  thus  resuscitated  might  conceivably  manage 
by  strikes  or  other  concerted  action  to  raise  their  collec- 
tive wages  from  (let  us  say)  half  the  total  gains  of  the 
business    to    two-thirds,    three-quarters,    four-fifths    or 
even  a  larger  fraction.     But  such  action  on  their  part 
would  not  have  the  least  effect  on  any  one  of  those  novel 
actions,  elaborately  prescribed  and  timed,  which  their 
hands  would  have  to  execute  in  order  to  render  that 
total  gain  possible  out  of  which  their  wages,  whether 
large  or  small,  would  come.     What  they  did  as  members 
of  a  Union  would  have  been  democratic  action  of  some 
sort,  but  it  would  not  have  been  action  of  the  sort  which 
alone   is   industrially   productive.     It   would   have   be- 
longed, not  to  the  province  of  industrial  democracy,  but 
to  that  wider  province  of  democratic  action  which  must, 
as  we  shall  see  in  greater  detail  hereafter,  be  compre- 
hended under  the  term  "social."     We  will,  therefore, 
in  discussing  Industrial  Democracy,  use  the  word  "in- 
dustrial "  here  in  its  sole  legitimate  sense — the  sense 
indicated  by  Mill,  when  he  says  that  every  action  which 


^it 


82      LIMITS   OF   PURE  DEMOCRACY 

is  commonly  called  "industrial"  or  "productive" 
resolves  itself  ultimately  into  one  species  of  operation-- 
namely  the  transference  by  human  l^ands  of  material 
substances  from  one  position  to  another.  Mill  ought  to 
have  included  the  action  of  the  human  intelligence  in 
determining  what  the  substances  selected  for  transfer- 
ence should  be,  and  how  and  in  what  order  the  various 
rearrangements  should  be  made ;  but  the  fact  remains 
that  no  action  is  industrial  which  does  not  subserve  or 
culminate  in  the  re-arrangement  of  material  substances 
in  such  a  wav  as  to  convert  them  into  material  or 
economic  goods,  or  which  does  not  consist  of  such 
services  as  may  be  requisite  for  the  final  enjoyment  of 

The  scope  of  our  present  inquiry  having  been,  then, 
thus  delimited,  we  may  now  go  on  to  consider  what, 
according  to  current  conceptions  of  it,  the  principle  of 
pure  democracy  as  applied  to  industry  means. 


CHAPTER   II 


PURE   DEMOCRATIC   INDUSTRY 

What,  according  to  current  conceptions  of  it,  demo- 
cracy means  in  the  sphere  of  political  life  has  been 
shown  by  reference  to  the  words  of  the  American  writer, 
who  describes  it  as  a  system  of  government  which  en- 
sures that  "  every  citizen  shall,  '  in  virtue  of  his  man- 
hood alone,'  exert  an  equal  influence  '  over  the  affairs 
of  the  common  country.'  "  In  the  same  way,  when 
extended  to  the  sphere  of  industry,  the  idea  of  pure 
democracy  means  that  every  worker,  not  indeed  because 
he  is  a  man,  but  because,  and  in  so  far  as,  he  is  a  man 
who  works  industrially,  shall  play  an  equal  part  in  the 
technical  process  of  production ;  or  that  production,  as 
Mr.  Webb  and  others  say  in  more  general  language, 
"shall  be  controlled  by  the  people  themselves." 

Now,  the  first  point  emphasised  in  our  argument  with 
regard  to  political  government  was  that  the  word 
"people,"  as  used  by  the  doctrinaires  of  democracy, 
must,  if  it  has  any  distinctive  meaning  at  all,  mean  the 
units  of  the  average  mass  to  the  exclusion  of  any 
minority  whose  talents  and  energies  are  above  the 
average  standard,  and  whose  judgments,  in  so  far  as 
they  differed  from  those  of  the  great  majority,  would, 
if  allowed  to  prevail,  make  the  average  mass  subject  to 
them.  The  units  of  this  minority  would,  under  such  a 
system,  not  indeed  be  in  theory  disfranchised;  but  the 
majority  could  always  outvote  them,  and  in  this  way 
would  necessarily  render  their  exceptional  judgments 
nugatory. 

Here,  as  we  have  seen  already,  is  one  of  the  most 
obvious  difficulties  which  besets  the  idea  of  democracy 
as  applied  to  political  government;  but  in  the  sphere 
of  technical  production  it  is  practically  much  more  for- 

83 


84      LIMITS  OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

midable.     A  rudimentary  example  of  it  may  be  seen  in 
the   Trade   Union   policy   which   forbids   a   bricklayer, 
specially  alert  and  dexterous,  to  lay  more  bricks  in  a 
day  than  can  be  laid  with  ease  by  the  great  mass  of  his 
fellows.     This  is  a  policy  which  experience  shows  to  be 
practicable,   but   the   principle   involved   in   it   has   its 
obvious  limits.     Not  even  the  extremest   advocate   of 
democratic  or  Trade  Union  principles  would  forbid  a 
very  skilful  surgeon  to  mend  a  man's  broken  leg,  on  the 
ground  that  most  surgeons  could  do  nothing  better  than 
amputate  it.     Indeed,  in  view  of  modern  applications 
of  abstruse  science  to  industry,  the  most  careless  thinker 
will  experience  a  difficulty  in  contending  that  production 
could    have    reached    or    could    maintain    its    present 
efficiency  if  no  judgments  or  faculties  took  any  part  in 
controlling  it  except  such  as  are  formed  and  exercised 
by  ninety-nine  men  of  every  hundred.     And  that  here 
we  have  a  difficulty  which  at  all  events  requires  atten- 
tion is  shown  by  the  fact  that  the  doctrinaires  of  Indus- 
trial Democracy  have  of  late  years  spent  much  of  their 
ingenuity    in    attempts    at    explaining    it    away.      The 
nature  and  the  value  of  these  attempts  we  shall  have 
occasion  to  discuss  presently.     For  the  moment  it  is 
enough  to  observe  that,  whatever  their  value  may  be, 
they  must,  for  a  time  at  all  events,  have  seemed  satis- 
factory to  a  large  number  of  enthusiasts ;  for  they  have 
enabled  even  thinkers  who  claim  to  be  taken  seriously 
to  go  on  repeating,  without  any  admitted  qualification, 
that   Industrial   Democracy   is  the   goal   of   all   human 
progress,  and  that  Industrial  Democracy,  according  **to 
a  growing  consensus  of  opinion,"  means  the  control  or 
the   entire   direction   of   industry   by  the   units   of   the 
"people  themselves,"  which  can  only  mean  the  units 
of  the  average  mass  to  the  exclusion  of  all  those  whose 
talents  are  above  the  average. 

If  we  wish,  then,  to  arrive  at  any  conclusion  as  to  how 
far  the  conception  of  pure  industrial  democracy  is  in  any 
way  consonant  with  the  facts  or  the  possibilities  of  life, 
let  us  consider  it  as  reduced  to  a  strict  and  ostensibly 
scientific  theory  by  the  thinker  to  whom,  however  widely 
they  may  have  come  to  differ  from  him  in  detail,  the 
industrial  democrats  of  to-day  all  owe  their  inspiration. 


MARX   ON  PRODUCTION 


85 


That  thinker  is  Marx;  and  he  has  this  merit,  at  all 
events,  that  he  provides  us  with  a  doctrine  which,  if  we 
can  accept  it  as  true,  invests  the  idea  of  production  as 
^  P"r^|y  democratic  process  with  a  clear-cut  and  in- 
telligible meaning,  and  also  connects  this  meaning  with 
dailv-experienced  fact. 

The  primary  propositions  of  Marx  may  be  briefly 
summed  up  thus.  If  we  take  at  starting  the  raw  gifts 
of  nature  for  granted,  all  economic  wealth  is  the  product 
of  manual  labour,  or  the  impact  of  hands  on  matter; 
and  further,  if  allowance  be  made  for  cases  of  abnormal 
weakness,  the  amount  of  wealth  which  every  labourer 
produces  by  working  with  normal  diligence  for  a  given 
time  is  equal.  Marx  was  careful  to  add  that,  when 
labour  is  thus  spoken  of,  it  must  not  be  taken  to  con- 
sist of  mere  manual  efforts  as  such,  but  includes  in  the 
case  of  each  individual  labourer  those  mental  activities 
by  which  his  manual  efforts  are  directed,  and  which  form 
an  essential  part  of  his  indivisible  manhood.  But  this 
careful    enlargement    of    the    meaning    of    the    term 

labour "  is  so  far  from  enlarging  the  sense  of  the 
original  formula  that  it  does  but  accentuate  what  were 
intended  by  Marx  to  be  its  Hmitations.  The  essence  of 
his  meaning  is  that,  though  mental  effort  of  some  sort 
must  always  direct  manual,  this  mental  effort  in  the  case 
of  each  labouring  unit  must  be  taken  as  directing  the 
movements  of  his  own  hands  only,  and  not  as  dictating, 
controlling,  or  exercising  a  mastery  over  the  technical 
movements  of  the  hands  of  an  aggregate  of  other  men. 

That  such  is  his  general  meaning  when  he  lays  down 
the  proposition  that  the  wealth-product  of  all  labourers, 
hour  for  hour,  is  equal,  will  be  seen  more  clearly  if  we 
consider  his  argument  in  detail.  Labour  in  all  civilised, 
and  even  in  semi-civilised  countries,  is,  he  says,  so  far 
divided  that  different  labourers  devote  themselves  to 
different  trades.  Each  of  them,  wholly  or  mainly,  lives 
by  produchig  one  class  of  goods  only,  of  which  he  himself 
will  consume  little,  or  perhaps  nothing.  Hence,  the 
results  of  his  labour,  in  so  far  as  they  are  wealth  for 
himself,  will  not  consist  of  the  things  which  he  has 
fabricated  with  his  own  hands,  but  of  other  and  various 
things   which   have   been   fabricated   by   the   hands   of 


86      LIMITS   OF   PURE  DEMOCRACY 

others,  and  which,  by  parting  with  his  own  products,  he 
is  able  to  get  in  exchange  for  them.  Hence,  whenever 
an  exchange  is  made,  the  first  thing  necessary  is  a 
common  standard  of  some  kind,  by  which  the  value  of 
unlike  goods  may  be  estimated ;  and,  according  to  Marx, 
wealth-value  is  determined  by  one  thing  only — namely 
the  amount  of  manual  labour  which,  as  measured  by 
time,  is  commonly  required  for  the  production  of  what- 
ever goods  may  be  in  question.  Thus,  if  each  of  a  hundred 
labourers  labouring  for  a  hundred  hours  produces  so 
many  finished  commodities,  no  matter  what  their  char- 
acter, whether  they  consist  of  mince-pies,  watches,  pints 
of  blacking,  delicate  carvings,  jewels,  or  flints  broken 
into  fragments  for  the  purpose  of  mending  roads,  the 
total  product  ^  of  each  man  will  purchase  as  much  of  the 
products  of  any  number  of  the  others  as  requires,  if  they 
are  taken  together,  a  hundred  hours  to  produce  them. 
Hence,  Marx  and  his  followers  have  contended  that  the 
proper  medium  of  exchange  would  be,  not  money  in  its 
ordinary  form,  but  "labour-checks,"  each  of  which 
would  be  a  certificate  that  the  holder  had  worked  with 
his  hands  for  so  many  hours  or  minutes,  and  was  there- 
fore entitled  to  so  much  of  any  commodities  as  any 
other  worker  could  produce  in  the  same  time. 

Now,  if  this  theory  of  wealth-production  be  at  once 
correct  and  complete,  it  not  only  provides  a  logically 
coherent  meaning  for  the  conception  of  industrial  demo- 
cracy in  its  most  unqualified  form,  as  a  multitude  of 
processes  conducted  by  absolutely  equal  units,  but  it 
also  gives  us  a  picture  of  industrial  democracy  in  action 
— in  action  not  only  as  a  possibility,  but  as  a  hard  con- 
temporary fact.  Indeed,  to  call  it  a  theory  at  all,  as  is 
often  done,  is  misleading.     When  Marx  said  that  manual 

*  The  total  product  of  each  lahourer  is  to  be  understood  as  the  value 
which  his  own  labour  adds  to  the  raw  material  on  which  he  works. 
Thus  the  value  of  an  ounce  of  gold  represents  the  labour  necessary,  on 
an  average  for  finding  it,  and  presenting  it  to  other  labourers  in  a 
workable  form.  According  to  Marx  every  goldsmith  who  spends  a 
week  in  fashioninjj  an  ounce  of  gold  into  a  spoon  adds  an  equal  value 
to  the  metal,  no  matter  what  may  be  the  artistic  quality  of  his  work. 
An  artist  adds  no  more  to  the  value  of  an  ounce  of  gold  in  a  week  than 
a  stone-breaker  adds  to  the  value  of  a  heap  of  stones,  or  than  a  pastry- 
cook adds  to  the  value  of  so  much  flour  and  butter. 


LABOUR  AS  SOLE  PRODUCER   87 

labour  is  the  sole  human  agency  involved  in  the  pro- 
duction of  wealth,  he  did  not  mean  that  it  would  be  so 
under  such  and  such  changed  conditions.  He  meant 
that  it  is  so  now,  that  it  always  has  been  and  will  be, 
and  that  no  productive  agent  other  than  the  man  who 
works  with  his  hands  is  possible.  Similarly,  when  he 
said  that  every  manual  labourer  produces  in  a  given 
time  goods  of  an  equal  value,  he  meant  that  everywhere, 
in  the  actual  markets  of  the  world,  goods  do  exchange 
in  proportion  to  the  labour-time  required  for  their  pro- 
duction, the  kind  and  quality  of  the  labour  being  matters 
of  complete  indifference.  And  if  anybody  should  ask 
why,  in  the  minds  of  Marx  and  his  followers,  industrial 
democracy — a  thing  already  established — should  be 
associated  with  revolutionary  change,  the  answer  is  that 
the  kind  of  change  they  contemplated  had  nothing  to 
do  with  the  industrial  process  as  such.  It  related  solely 
to  the  fact  that  the  implements  which  the  equal  labourers 
use  (such  as  factory  plant  and  means  of  transport)  have, 
owing  to  political  or  social  accidents,  been  nefariously 
appropriated  by  men  who,  so  far  as  production  is  con- 
cerned, have  nothing  to  do  with  the  industrial  process 
at  all.  Marx  was  never  weary  of  insisting  that  the 
modern  "possessors  of  industry" — the  employing  or 
capitalist  classes — owe  their  present  positions  to  his- 
torical accidents  solely,  which  enable  them  to  appro- 
priate most  of  what  the  industrial  democracy  produces, 
whilst  they  themselves — to  use  a  phrase  frequent  in 
Marxian  oratory — "  do  but  sit  in  their  chairs  watching 
the  machine  go."  Let  these  mere  parasites  be  elimi- 
nated either  by  the  social  pressure  of  Trade  Unions,  or 
politically  by  the  pressure  of  legislation,  or  if  needs  be 
by  armed  rebellion,  and  industry  itself — so  the  argument 
of  Marx  proceeds — will  not  be  hampered  or  dislocated 
by  any  technical  change.  Remaining  what  it  always 
has  been  and  must  be,  namely  a  purely  democratic 
process,  it  will  still  be  as  efficient  as  before;  but  the 
fact  that  it  will  operate  under  changed  social  conditions 
will  render  that  vast  fraction  of  the  product  which  the 
parasites  now  appropriate  available  for  distribution 
amongst  the  manual  labourers  alone,  whose  hands  and 
brains  have  alone  played  any  part  in  producing  it. 


88      LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

Here  we  have  the  outlines  of  that  classical  doctrine  of 
production  on  which  all  the  earlier  conceptions  of  indus- 
trial democracy  based  themselves,  and  which  the  indus- 
trial democrats  of  to-day,  whilst  repudiating  many  of 
its  details,  have  endeavoured  to  re-establish  in  the  form 
of  revised  versions.  But,  before  considering  what  these 
revised  versions  come  to,  let  us  consider  the  doctrine  in 
the  form  in  which  Marx  left  it,  with  its  two  salient  pro- 
positions— that  wealth  is  produced  by  manual  labour 
only,  and  that  all  manual  labourers  as  productive  agents 
are  equal;  and  let  us  ask  whether  there  is  or  ever  has 
been  any  state  of  society  to  which  these  propositions  are 
applicable.  The  answer  to  this  question  will  probably 
be  a  surprise,  not  only  to  critics  who  regard  Marx  with 
contempt,  but  even  to  the  more  discerning  of  those  who, 
being  in  sympathy  with  his  temper  and  his  objects,  are 
naturally  inclined  to  agree  with  him  so  far  as  they 
reasonably  can. 

Without  indulging  in  any  non-historical  fancies,  such 
as  those  which  constituted  the  stock-in-trade  of  Rous- 
seau, it  is  possible  to  look  back  to  stages  of  primitive 
life  in  which  the  process  of  production  actually  did  con- 
form, with  substantial  exactness,  to  the  terms  of  the 
Marxian  doctrine.  In  those  societies  which  preceded 
the  organisation  of  slavery  all  the  little  wealth  that 
existed  was  produced  by  manual  labourers,  each  using 
his  hands  under  the  direction  of  his  own  intelligence. 
Further,  we  may  assume  that  as  producers  they  were 
all  of  them  fairly  equal,  and  that  their  products,  in  so 
far  as  there  was  any  occasion  to  exchange  them,  ex- 
changed in  proportion  to  the  time  that  was  necessary 
for  the  production  of  each. 

But,  however  completely  primitive  conditions  such  as 
these  may  have  realised  the  Marxian  conception  of  the 
industrial  process  in  some  respects,  there  is  one  respect 
in  which  they  differ  notoriously  from  that  process  as  it 
exists  to-day.  Relatively  to  the  time  consumed,  and 
to  the  number  of  individuals  engaged  in  it,  the  volume 
of  products  in  which  that  process  results  to-day  is  in- 
comparably greater  than  it  was,  not  only  in  the  primi- 
tive, but  even  in  a  recent  past.  If,  then,  manual  labour 
directed  solely  by  the  minds  of  the  labourers  themselves 


LABOUR  AND   PROGRESS 


89 


remains  always  and  under  all  conditions  the  sole  pro- 
ductive agency  as  it  was  when  the  world  began,  and  if 
no  one  labourer  working  for  a  given  time  produces 
appreciably  more  wealth  than  another,  the  question 
arises  of  how  the  output  of  labour  as  a  whole  can  ever 
be  greater  in  one  age  than  in  another. 

The  pertinence  of  this  question  was  recognised  by 
Marx  himself,  but  in  the  sole  answers  which  he  himself 
could  suggest  he  merely  evaded  the  difficulty  by  trans- 
lating it  into  another  form.  Manual  labour,  he  said, 
has  in  the  modern  world  acquired  an  efficiency  never 
known  before,  because  "the  implements  of  production 
have  been  concentrated,"  whereas  prior  to  the  develop- 
ment of  capitalism  on  a  large  scale  they  were  "  scattered." 
Thus,  for  a  thousand  hand-looms  once  scattered  amongst 
a  hundred  villages  is  now  substituted  the  mechanism  of 
a  single  gigantic  mill ;  and  a  thousand  weavers,  pre- 
viously working  in  isolation,  cluster  round  this  one  mill 
for  a  common  productive  purpose.  By  such  means, 
says  Marx,  two  results  have  been  accomplished.  Manual 
labour,  within  the  limits  of  each  industry,  has  been 
enabled  to  divide  itself  to  an  extent  never  before  pos- 
sible; and  through  the  employment  of  great  unitary 
mechanisms,  each  actuated  by  a  single  monstrous  engine, 
"society"  has  acquired  "a  new  control  over  the  pro- 
ductive forces  of  nature." 

Now,  all  this  may  be  true  enough,  but  it  leaves  the 
question  at  issue  altogether  untouched.  Certain  changes, 
such  as  those  which  Marx  roughly  indicates,  have  no 
doubt  occurred.  So  much  we  may  take  for  granted. 
But  these  changes  must  have  been  due,  and  their  main- 
tenance must  be  due  also,  to  the  actions  of  human 
beings — mental  actions  or  manual,  or  mental  and  manual 
combined.  The  question  is,  by  whom  were  these  actions 
performed  ?  Were  they  all  planned  and  performed  by 
average  manual  labourers,  directed  by  no  knowledge 
and  no  intelligence  but  their  own  ?  Did  no  other  class 
play  any  part  in  the  matter  ?  Does  no  other  class  play 
any  part  in  it  to-day  ?  Marx  himself  admits — he  not 
only  admits,  he  asseverates — that  one  of  the  changes 
in  question,  namely  "the  concentration  of  the  imple- 
ments," was  the  work  of  "  infamous  persons  "  who  never 


90      LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 


did  a  stroke  of  manual  labour  in  their  lives,  and  who 
concentrated  the  implements  merely  by  getting  posses- 
sion of  them,  thus  causing  the  labourers  to  "  concentrate 
themselves  "  in  the  same  way.  But  since  the  men — the 
modern  capitalists — by  whom  the  implements  came  to 
be  possessed,  had,  according  to  Marx,  no  other  object 
than  that  of  extracting  a  toll  from  the  labourers  whom 
they  allowed  to  use  them,  these  capitalists  certainly,  if 
the  argument  of  Marx  is  correct,  can  have  done  nothing 
personally  to  make  labour  more  productive.  The  crucial 
questions  still  unanswered  are  these.  Did  the  labourers, 
their  concentration  being  once  accomplished,  proceed 
to  divide  their  individual  labour-tasks  for  themselves  ? 
Did  they,  and  do  they,  as  units  of  equal  influence, 
accomphsh  for  themselves  the  intricate  task  of  co- 
ordinating them?  And  finally,  to  come  to  the  point 
on  which  everything  else  turns,  is  it  solely  to  the  equal 
talents  of  average  manual  labourers,  cogitating  in  their 
spare  time,  that  we  owe  that  "new  control  over  the 
productive  forces  of  nature "  by  which  the  modern 
system  of  production  is  distinguished  from  all  others  ? 

It  will  be  observed  that,  in  speaking  of  the  triumphs 
of  industrial  science,  Marx  shrinks  from  the  naked  pro- 
position that  nobody  but  manual  labourers  played  any 
part  in  achieving  them.  He  takes  refuge  in  saying  that 
they  have  somehow  been  achieved  by  "society."  But 
since,  according  to  his  own  reiterated  statements, 
"society"  is  composed  of  two  classes  only— namely 
labourers  who  produce  everything,  and  idlers  who  pro- 
duce nothing— he  cannot  mean  that  the  most  important 
additions  ever  made  to  the  productive  efficiency  of  man- 
kind are  due  to  the  latter— that  the  latter,  the  mere 
idlers,  have  had  anything  whatever  to  do  with  them. 
He  must  mean  that  they  are  due  to  the  labourers,  and 
due  to  them  only — men  no  one  of  whom,  in  point  of 
productive  efficiency,  is,  according  to  him,  superior  to 
any  other.  Further,  he  must  mean  precisely  the  same 
thing  with  regard  to  that  other  process  which  he  notes 

as  no  less  peculiar  to  production  in  modem  times that 

is  to  say,  the  new  subdivision  of  labour-tasks,  and  the 
elaborate  organisation  of  the  multitudes  performing 
them  in  scientific  concert.     He  must  mean  that  this 


PRIMITIVE  LABOUR 


91 


subdivision  and  organisation  are  devised,  determined 
and  carried  out  by  the  manual  labourers  themselves,  all 
-I^  1^*^^^  together  as  units  of  equal  influence,  and 
unaided  by  any  intelligence  superior  to  or  other  than 
their  own.  He  must  mean  that  industry  in  its  most 
elaborate,  most  scientific  and  most  productive  forms,  is 
a  process  no  less  purely  democratic  to-day  than  it  was 
m  the  days  when  the  homes  of  men  were  caves,  when 
their  clothes  were  skins  or  loin-cloths,  and  their  imple- 
naents  were  sticks  and  stones.  He  must  mean,  in  short, 
that  m  any  human  society  the  labour  of  the  average 
units,  if  we  begin  with  taking  it  in  its  rudest  and  most 
primitive  stage,  contains  or  has  contained  in  itself  the 
potency  of  indefinitely  great  developments,  solely 
through  the  exercise  of  those  mental  and  manual  facul- 
ties in  respect  of  which  no  one  unit  is  appreciably 
superior  to  the  rest.  Is  this  the  case  ?  Does  the  history 
of  mankind  offer  any  evidence  to  show  that  mere  average 
labour,  uninfluenced  by  any  oligarchic  authority, 
becomes  able  to  produce  in  one  age  an  output  of  material 
wealth  appreciably  larger  than  it  previously  had  been 
m  another?  And  the  answer  is  that,  up  to  a  certain 
point,  a  purely  democratic  progress  of  this  kind  is 
indubitable,  the  implications  of  the  Marxian  doctrine 
being  up  to  that  point  justified. 

The  explanation  of  this  progress  is  to  be  found  in  the 
following  historical  causes,  none  of  which,  so  far  as  the 
technique  of  production  is  concerned,  involve  the  exer- 
tion of  any  mental  or  manual  faculties  beyond  such 
as  are  possessed  by  the  vast  majority  of  the  units  of 
whatever  race  may  be  in  question.  These  causes  are 
four  in  number  : — 

Firstly,  the  early  localisation  of  industries,  which,  as 
Herbert  Spencer  points  out,  has  been  the  first  distinctive 
feature  of  every  community  when  emerging  from  the 
primitive  or  sub-primitive  stage; — 

Secondly,  a  gradual  division  of  task-work  within  the 
limits  of  each  industry  itself; — 

Thirdly,  certain  very  simple  inventions,  such  as  the 
plough,  the  hand-loom,  the  potter's  wheel,  and  the  small 
boat;  together  with  the  discovery,  due  to  common 
experience  or  to  chance,  of  the  qualities  of  various  sub- 


92       LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 


PROGRESS   OF   PURE   LABOUR       93 


stances  (such  as  flints  or  metals),  and  of  various  very 
simple  processes : — 

Fourthly,  a  certain  coercion  of  the  labourers  which, 
though  exercised  over  them  by  men  other  than  them- 
selves, is  not  necessarily  connected  with  labour  in  respect 
of  its  technical  details,  but  which  merely  causes  it  to  be 
more  intense  and  continuous. 

All  these  causes  consist  either  of  the  action  of  experi- 
ence and  circumstance  on  average  minds  and  hands,  or 
of  the  average  reaction  of  such  minds  and  hands  to 
these. 

Thus,  the  early  localisation  of  industries  was,  as 
Herbert  Spencer  explains,  due  to  the  unequal  manner 
in  which  the  gifts  of  nature  are  distributed,  cultivable 
land,  potter's  clay,  and  fish,  for  example,  being  severally 
most  plentiful  in  so  many  different  neighbourhoods,  and 
the  occupants  of  each  neighbourhood,  in  accordance 
with  this  distribution,  devoting  themselves  severally  to 
tillage,  the  making  of  pots,  and  fishing.^  By  dividing 
their  industries  thus,  so  that  each  is  confined  to  the 
places  where  it  can  be  practised  to  the  best  advantage, 
men  have  increased  the  efficiency  of  their  otherwise 
unchanged  labour,  without  the  exercise  of  any  mental 
faculties  beyond  those  by  which  all  men  alike  are 
distinguished  from  the  higher  animals. 

The  division  of  labour-tasks  within  the  limits  of  each 
industry  itself  is,  up  to  a  certain  point,  a  spontaneous 
process  likewise.  In  the  case  of  any  commodity  the 
production  of  which  requires  more  than  one  kind  of 
operation,  any  one  labourer  can  discover  just  as  easily 
as  any  other  that  if  he  confines  himself  to  a  few  opera- 
tions only  he  acquires  a  quickness  of  hand  which  would 
else  be  beyond  his  reach.  A  group  of  labourers  may 
thus  become  more  productive  without  invoking  the  aid 
of  any  faculties  but  their  own. 

The  same  thing  may  be  said  of  those  basic  inventions 
and  discoveries  which  have  become,  one  after  another, 
almost  co-extensive  with  mankind.  They  have  been  the 
results  of  diffused  experience,  or  a  multitude  of  sporadic 
accidents,  each  of  them  speaking  plainly  to  the  average 

1  Thus  in  Fiji  the  coastal  inhabitants  produce  salt.  The  inhabitants 
of  an  inland  district,  who  have  never  seen  the  sea,  produce  sails. 


human  brain,  and  telling  nothing  to  any  one  man  which 
could  not  be  grasped  by  all. 

The  fourth  of  the  four  causes  here  in  question — that 
is  to  say,  the  institution  of  slavery — by  enabling  (as 
Mill  says)  a  permanently  leisured  class  to  devote  its 
faculties  to  the  accumulation  of  systematic  knowledge, 
gradually  resulted  in  the  application  of  such  knowledge 
to  industry.  In  the  great  empires  of  antiquity  the 
genius  of  the  scientific  architect  and  the  abstruse  lore 
of  the  astronomer  were  stamped  on  the  labours  of  the 
mason.  The  genius  of  Archimedes  was  operative  in 
the  ship-yards  of  ancient  Syracuse.  This  aspect  of  the 
matter,  however,  does  not  concern  us  here.  In  the 
present  connection  the  sole  fact  to  be  noted  is  that, 
quite  apart  from  any  technical  guidance  of  the  labour 
of  slaves  by  slave-owners,  the  coercion  of  the  former 
by  the  latter  made  the  labour  of  the  former  more  pro- 
ductive by  merely  rendering  more  intense  and  continuous 
a  number  of  industrial  actions,  such  as  those  involved 
in  agriculture,  which  the  labourers,  with  less  assiduity, 
had  already  carried  out  by  themselves. 

We  may  therefore  concede  to  Marx  and  the  earlier 
socialists  that,  not  only  in  primitive  and  sub-primitive 
times,  but  even  under  the  ancient  slave-systems  such  as 
those  of  Rome  and  Egypt,  the  industrial  process  was, 
to  a  very  great  extent,  a  process  carried  on  by  manual 
labourers  only,  who  were  subject  to  orders  so  far  as 
results  were  concerned,  but  who,  in  respect  of  their 
methods,  operated  as  a  true  democracy.  Since,  then,  the 
wealth  of  the  world  in  primitive  times  was  small,  and 
since,  owing  to  the  technical  actions  of  manual  labourers 
alone  it  has  increased  notoriously  up  to  a  certain  point, 
the  question  is  what,  as  a  matter  of  history,  are  the 
utmost  limits  which  this  increase  has  reached,  and  to 
what  extent,  and  to  the  presence  of  what  new  causes, 
has  the  industrial  process  as  a  whole  made  a  further 
advance  since  then  ? 

If  we  take  as  our  standard  of  efficiency  production  as 
it  is  to-day,  we  shall  find  that  the  progress  thus  exhibited 
by  the  manual  labourers  themselves,  striking  as  its 
results  have  been,  does  not  carry  us  far.  The  mere 
localisation  of  industries,  important  though  it  is  as  a 


94      LIMITS  OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

starting-point,  is  a  process,  if  taken  by  itself,  the  results 
of  which  are  soon  exhausted,  as  is  plain  from  the  fact 
that  it  is  extant  in  many  communities  whose  condition 
is  still  one  of  semi-primitive  poverty.  Of  those  basic 
inventions  and  discoveries,  examples  of  which  have  just 
been  given,  and  also  of  the  increased  dexterity  due  to 
divisions  of  task-work  in  its  earlier  and  simpler  forms, 
the  effects  on  the  efficiency  of  the  manual  labourers  as 
a  whole  have  limits  which  are  susceptible  of  more  accu- 
rate measurement.  That  the  great  basic  inventions  such 
as  the  loom  and  plough  were  the  products  of  industrial 
democracy  when  still  in  its  earlier  stages,  is  a  fact  fre- 
quently emphasised  by  industrial  democrats  to-day ;  and 
the  inference  which  they  draw  from  it  is  that  all  inven- 
tions and  discoveries — those  of  to-day  no  less  than  those 
of  yesterday — are  attributable  to  the  mass  of  average 
labourers  likewise.  They  could  hardly  have  hit  on  an 
argument  of  a  less  fortunate  kind.  It  is  one  which 
proves  nothing  but  the  narrowness  of  its  own  applica- 
tion ;  for  in  all  countries  where  labour  is  still  to  be  found 
operating  solely  or  mainly  under  the  direction  of  the 
manual  labourers  themselves,  the  inventions  and  pro- 
cesses in  use  at  the  present  day  still  remain  what  they 
were  thousands  of  years  ago.  These  primitive  inven- 
tions of  democracy  having  once  been  made,  democracy 
in  its  pure  state  has  subsequently  made  no  others. 
Mere  dexterity  has,  as  a  productive  agent,  shown  itself 
capable  of  a  more  protracted  progress;  but  this,  too, 
reached  its  hmits  before  any  of  the  extant  civilisations 
of  the  western  world  began.  The  brick-makers,  the 
masons,  the  carpenters,  and  other  craftsmen  of  to-day, 
if  left  to  perform  their  tasks  under  the  guidance  of  their 
own  brains  only,  would  in  a  given  time  produce  nothing 
more  or  nothing  better  than  their  predecessors  did  in 
Rome  at  the  dawn  of  the  Christian  era. 

It  remains  for  us  to  consider  the  extent  to  which  the 
product  per  head  of  a  given  number  of  labourers  work- 
ing under  their  own  direction  may  be  increased  by  mere 
coercion.  The  increased  continuity  of  effort  which  was 
imposed  on  the  labourers  from  without  by  the  slave- 
systems  of  the  ancient  world,  and  (we  may  add)  by  the 
corvie  system  of  the  Middle  Ages  also,  has  had  effects 


SLOW  PROGRESS   IN  PAST 


95 


which  spectacularly  were  very  much  more  conspicuous 
than  any  which  have  resulted  from  the  other  causes 
here  m  question.  But  these  effects  have  had  their 
narrow  limits  likewise.  Of  all  these  four  causes,  indeed, 
the  mere  coercion  of  labour  from  without  is  really  the 
one  whose  influence  is  least  expansive ;  for  its  effects  are 
determined,   not   by  the  potentialities  of  the   average 

"un?  ^u  ^^J!^'  ^^  ^^  ^^^  hands  as  mere  instruments  of 
skill,  but  by  something  much  less  elastic— namely  the 
niaximum  of  muscular  effort  of  which,  within  a  given 
time,  a  man's  organism  is,  as  a  whole,  capable.     Thus, 
if  so  many  primitive  labourers,  working  (let  us  say)  for 
twelve  hours  a  day,  would  have  produced  a  product  per 
head  which  was  expressible  by  the  number  6,  it  is  con- 
ceivable that  through  division  of  task-work,  simple  in- 
ventions and  so  forth,  they  might,  without  more  physical 
effort,  have  come  to  produce  in  a  labour-day  of  the  same 
length  a  product  per  head  expressible  by  the  number 
12.     But  it  is  obvious  that  their  product  could  not,  by 
any  mere  prolongation  of  their  labour-hours,  be  raised 
in  the  proportion  of  12  to  24,  for  no  slave-owner  could 
extort  from  the  strongest  slave  a  regular  labour-day  of 
twice  twelve  hours'  duration.     It  is  true  that  the  splen- 
dours of  Rome,  imperial,  public  and  private,  could  never 
have  come  into  existence  if  the  manual  labour  of  multi- 
tudes had  not  been  intensified  by  pressure  on  the  part 
of  the  ruling  few ;  but  mere  pressure  as  thus  applied  to 
a  mass  of  manual  labourers,  though  an  essential  element 
of  the  case,  was  far  from  being  its  sole  peculiarity.     An 
accessory  feature,  in  many  ways  more  important,  was 
the  fact  that  the  slave-owning  classes,  besides  intensify- 
ing to  the  utmost  the  labour  of  the  democracy  which 
worked  for  them,  were  to  a  degree  far  greater  able  to 
increase  its  numbers.     The  wealthy  classes  of  antiquity, 
when  their  wealth  had  reached  a  certain  point,  may  be 
compared  to  a  single  individual  who,  starting  with  a 
patrimony  (let  us  say)  of  five  hundred  slaves,  lets  them 
out  to   a   mine-owner — a  case   of  this   precise  kind  is 
mentioned  by  Athenaeus — receiving  for  each  a  rent  of 
£10  a  year,  ends  with  raising  his  income  from  £5,000 
to   £10,000,  not  by  making  five  hundred  slaves  work 
either  harder  or  better,  but  simply  by  getting  possession 


.1 


96      LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 

of  five  hundred  more.  The  income  of  the  slave-owner 
is  doubled,  but  the  product  of  each  slave  separately  is 
no  greater  than  it  was  before. 

Thus,  a  labouring  population  being  given,  which  is  in 
a  technical  sense  a  self-directing  democracy,  the  extent 
to  which  its  output  can  be  increased  by  mere  coercive 
pressure,  is,  though  considerable,  nothing  like  so  great 
as  at  first  sight  it  may  seem;  and  without  attempting 
to  fix  an  exact  date,  we  may  say  that  it  reached  its 
maximum  under  the  earlier  Roman  emperors.  It  is 
needless  to  enlarge  on  the  fact — for  no  one  is  likely  to 
dispute  it — that  the  societies  of  Mediaeval  Europe  were 
not  richer  than  the  society  for  which  Pompeii  was  a 
third-rate  watering-place,  and  Antioch,  Alexandria  and 
Corinth,  with  its  four-hundred-thousand  slaves,  were  no 
more  than  provincial  towns.  The  movement  called  the 
Renaissance  was,  in  industry  as  in  other  things,  an 
attempt  to  recover  ground  which  since  the  days  of  the 
Csesars  had  been  lost ;  and  it  may  be  said  with  confidence 
that,  up  to  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  there  was 
not  a  country  in  the  world  in  which  self-directed  manual 
labour  produced,  relatively  to  the  number  of  persons 
engaged  in  it,  more  than  it  did  in  the  days  of  Nero  or 
Hadrian. 

If,  then,  we  concede  to  Marx  and  his  followers — as  for 
purposes  of  argument  we  may  do,  though  with  many 
actual  reservations  ^ — that  even  up  to  a  time  so  recent 
as  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  or  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth  century  manual  labour  as  directed  by  the 
minds  of  the  labourers  themselves  was  the  sole  producer 
of  wealth  no  less  truly  than  it  is  amongst  primitive 
savages  to-day,  the  history  of  labour  so  far,  as  a  pro- 
ductive agent,  will  be  as  follows.  The  productivity  of 
labour  having  been  at  the  beginning  of  things  not  more 
than  sufficient  to  provide  the  human  animal  with  the 
bare  necessaries  of  existence,  such  as  leaves  to  sleep  on 
and  scraps  of  skin  for  clothing,  the  labourers  gradually 
in  the  course  of  untold  ages,  through  the  simple  inter- 
action of  experience  and  common  human  intelligence, 

1  Sombart  has  dealt  with  examples  of  capitalist  or  olifrarchic  enter- 
prise in  the  Middle  A^es,  and  in  the  16th  and  17th  centuries.  We  are 
dealing  here  not  with  existencies,  but  with  predominancies. 


MARX  ON  MODERN  PROGRESS  97 

dwellings    of    morUced    i!f       T^^^  thatched,  lake- 
utensilsT    hideous    nose  ^r     ""^"""^    S'-acefully-shaped 
fabrics/  ThS  thus^ais'edTh  •  """^    patterned    textile 
lower  levels  of  civ  lisSn    and  T"""'"  °*  "^^  *«  ^e 
acquired  by  them  werl      '    u    u*^^  Personal  faculties 
railed  to  a^  hiSr  Zlrl^"^"^  ^P^"^^^  ^^Plains, 
cradled  in  baS  reason?     ^^n,<=\rtain  warlike  races 
ants  of  regions  exceE^n'''^':^?  ^^^  ^^'^  ^^"'^  inhabit! 
to  exert  these  facuh  est  I  ^'^•'''  ^"^  <^ompelled  them 
intensity.     Under  th if ct7.  *,  °e^  ««<*  more  sustained 
labour  ^rose    and  *Je  ,  *^n  ^'^^'^^^  t^e  powers  of  manual 
until,  having  reached  >hl?r  •  "^'*'°    ""^^^^    another, 

of  Diocletial  they  idined  or''^"'".P"°'  *"  '^'  ^^^^ 
more  than  fifteen  Lndred  years  T^-  ^  ^*^°^^t'»  ^^r 
rapid  that  history  may  rejard  it  I  J!J  ^  ™^°?^"  "« 
took  place  the  like  of  vfhK  ,]  sudden,  a  change 

First  in  England  and  i.*^  never  been  seen  before, 
the  western  world  ?he?nH?"r"*y  throughout  most  of 
acquired  some  new  vitalitvfJ'fu  ^T^^'  ^«  *  ^^ole 

engaged  in  it,  made  a  greater  advanpl  t  t^^"  *'^'°^! 
a. single  century  than  it  had  done  durfn^  all  ^r^'n  °* 
mums  of  human  life  preceding^!         ^  ^"  *^'  '"'""°- 

would  ha^e  'Zn\r:T  "'  '^'  ™""^'  ^^^  himself 
recent  un^arafc  IL^elnr  Active" t''   '""^ 

d";Sis^rth?rn"d=,-Lr^^ 

as  Marx  says,  develope^d  themservr  fiTst  !n^^^^^^ 
and  which,  though  far^om  sudden  in  the  strict  seSe^nf 
f^^.'^'^u^  ^""^""^  «'«*  ^««"'«d  «nd  conspicuous  at  a 
oTVaSo:-  H^  S  itrV^T  Sf  '^F^^"«' 

stTt'eTlu^  af r  ^r-""?^"^*  ^^\iinii^; 

stated,   but,  as  has  been  said  already,  the  onlv  e/ 
planations  which  he  suggests  must  haVe  some  Xr 


I 


98      LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

explanation  at  the  back  of  them,  and  one  which  his  own 
do  not  even  so  much  as  hint  at.  We  will  now  go  on 
to  consider  what  this  ultimate  explanation  is.  We  shall 
find  that  it  lies  in  none  of  the  facts  which  Marx  contents 
himself  with  enumerating— not  in  the  mere  growth  of 
knowledge,  not  in  the  mere  development  of  scientific  ma- 
chinery, not  in  the  mere  concentration  of  the  labourers, 
or  in  any  new  subdivision  of  their  labour  tasks.  AH 
these  causes,  however  real,  are  secondary,  and  require 
themselves  to  be  explained.  The  basic  explanation  is 
to  be  found  in  a  fact  which  lies  deeper  than  any  of 
them. 


CHAPTER   III 

THE   SECRET  OF   MODERN  PROGRESS 

^-^^  S^eTT^r^^^^  explanation  which 

in  the  modern  world      P'^^"^*^^^  Powers  of  industry 

powers  are  due,  he  sa^s   to  thr  '''''''^  ^^^  unparalleled 
FirQf Ixr    o  ii  ^  '  *^  *^^^e  causes :— 

ducS'^^hichTSr^T  "  °*  *^^  Elements  of  pre 
used  morrorLs  in  uTi  .^'"u'  T^^  "scattered,"  and 
owning  them  •_  '''^''°°  ^^  *^«  individual  labourers 

coSaL^Vf  Su^ir  ^^^^^^ 

labels  =SLd^*^^—^^^^^^ 

knoSdge'wii;;h*"So°cLV''^^^^  "*  ""'^''''^^  «"-°«fi« 
changes  were  i^nro~^    >!  acquired  whilst  these 

mechanisms  andTrSsi:^'''  '"'^'"^^''^  ^  °«^ 
control  over  the  pKS  f orTs  oTCtu^J^.  '  "^'^ 

cen^t^^^of%fe;•;;Ts*t:^^^^^^^  *^^  -- 

trial  effects,  wasra'cordbrtl  MarrnotTn'S,'?^" 
industrial  process  at  all.  It  consi^tl^'i^  I  u  '*^-^"  *" 
by  men  otherwise  idle  of  nil  tkl  i -l!?  "  *^,^  ^"^'^S  "P 
viously  owned  by  Se  users  of  thl^  implements  pr^ 
of  these  implements  toaPt^^,-  ^™'  ^"'^  ^^^  stacking 
sures,  to  wK^ LbS  Vad  Z  SYtt'  ^t"! 
to  produce  anything.  It  was  simnK^^K  *  •  ^  ^^f^^^ 
generalisation  of  a  Dractic/rfni^^^/^^  triumphant 
the  middle  of  the  sIxC  h  centi^"^  tL  waS^'^"t '" 
maugurated  by  "the  great  clothTeVs,"  rnrcalleKhe 

tTeTn^SLl  TpVo'di:£^n"^^^^^^^ 

"the  letting  them  Juft^X Trtm^ceTsTt^^^^^^^^^^   Tts 


100     LIMITS  OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

object  and  its  result  were,  according  to  Marx,  simply 
to  affect  distribution  by  enabling  the  "engrossers"  to 
appropriate  the  larger  part  of  the  product ;  but  it  had 
nothing  to  do  with  the  details  of  the  productive  process 
at  all.  These  were  still  determined  by  the  manual 
labourers  themselves.  The  causes,  therefore,  to  which 
modern  industry  owes  those  vastly  increased  efficiencies 
which  are  still  the  wonder  of  the  world,  are,  according 
to  the  Marxian  logic,  not  three,  but  two — namely  the 
acquisition  of  "  a  new  control  over  the  productive  forces 
of  nature,"  and  a  new  subdivision  and  a  more  elaborate 
co-ordination  of  the  tasks  performed  directly  by  the 
labourer's  own  hands. 

Now,  this  explanation  of  the  first  cause — namely  the 
acquisition  and  concentration  of  the  implements  by  a 
personally    non-productive    class — might    have    at    all 
events  some  superficial  plausibility,  if  applied  to  con- 
ditions as  they  were  up  to  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century.     In  Hogarth's  series  of  pictures,  "The  Indus- 
trious and  the  Idle  Apprentice,"  there  are  two  represent- 
ing the  interior  of  the  business  premises  of  a  rich  cloth- 
weaver;  and  what  we  see  is  one  room  after  another  in 
w^hich  a  number  of  hand-looms  are  being  worked,  each 
by  a  single  operative.     The  implements  are  practically 
the  same  as  they  had  been  in  the  Middle  Ages.     They 
have  undergone  no  change  whatever,  except  for  the  fact 
that  they  have  been  congregated  under  a  single  roof. 
But  between  an  establishment  such  as  this,  which  was 
typical  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  the  kind  of  estab- 
lishment which   was  typical   of  the   century  following 
there  is  one  profound  difference  of  which  Marx  was  fully 
aware,  but  of  which,  when  he  speaks  of  concentration, 
he  takes  no  account  whatever.     This  difference  consists 
in  the  fact  that,  whereas  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century   the   implements   of   earlier,  periods   had    been 
changed  only  by  being  concentrated,  they  were,  from  the 
beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  onwards,  not  con- 
centrated only,  but  reconstructed,  unified  and  entirely 
metamorphosed     also.      That     metamorphosis     accom- 
panied  concentration — that   the   two   processes   rapidly 
came  to  be  inseparable — was  as  plain  to  Marx  as  to 
anybody,  as  his  own  language  shows;  for  it  was  only 


ORGANISATION  AND  MIND        101 

the  metamorphosis  of  hundreds  of  puny  appliances  into 
vast  unitary  mechanisms  actuated  by  huge  engines  that 
gave  to  the  human  worker  what  he  calls  "  a  new  control 
over  the  productive  forces  of  nature."  But  as  to  how 
the  metamorphosis  was  accomplished,  the  theory  of 
Marx  is  silent,  and  he  hides  its  silence  under  a  veil  of 
inept  tautology.  The  metamorphosis,  he  says,  is  at- 
tributable to  the  modern  growth  of  knowledge.  That, 
no  doubt,  is  true ;  but  of  knowledge  acquired,  and  know- 
ledge applied,  by  whom  ?  What  he  aims  at  proving  is 
that,  apart  from  the  concentration  of  the  various  imple- 
ments of  production,  in  respect  of  their  ownership  and 
their  locality,  by  a  purely  possessive  and  industrially 
idle  class,  the  entire  progress  of  industry  was  accom- 
plished by  the  labourers  alone.  If  such  was  the  case, 
then,  the  manual  labourers  generally  must,  from  the 
beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  onwards,  have  not 
only  reorganised  for  themselves  the  whole  of  the  various 
tasks  performed  by  their  own  hands,  readjusting  and 
re-devising  them  in  the  light  of  new  and  abstruse  know- 
ledge, but  the  whole  of  this  new  knowledge  must  have 
been  acquired  by  themselves  also.  They  must  them- 
selves have  translated  it  into  that  new  order  of  mechan- 
isms without  which  their  new  accomplishments  in  the 
way  of  self-organisation  would  be  nugatory. 

Is  there,  then,  any  reason  for  supposing,  or  is  it  even 
remotely  conceivable,  that  the  labourers,  unguided  by 
any  brains  but  their  own,  accomplished  by  democratic 
agreement  both  these  processes,  or  either  of  them  ?  The 
knowledge  involved  in  the  metamorphosis  of  a  collection 
of  old  hand-looms  into  the  plant  of  a  modern  cotton-mill, 
or  of  a  yardful  of  old  stage-coaches  into  motor-cars  or 
express  trains,  was  of  a  very  elaborate  kind.  Did  it 
spring  up  in  the  brains  of  all  the  labourers  sponta- 
neously, as  a  sense  of  sin  springs  up  at  a  revival  meet- 
ing ?  Did  it  even  originate  in  the  brains  of  Trade  Union 
delegates,  from  whose  speeches  their  constituents  im- 
bibed it,  assenting  to  it  by  a  show  of  hands  ?  On  the 
contrary,  in  the  process  of  acquiring  the  multitudinous 
knowledge  in  question,  and  translating  it  by  means  of 
machinery  into  "  a  new  control  over  the  productive 
forces  of  nature,"  the  labourers  as  a  class  have  played 


102     LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 


GROWTH   OF   BRAIN-WORK       103 


no  part  whatever  except  one  which  is  purely  negative — 
namely  that  of  suspicious  and  occasionally  of  violent 
opposition.  As  history  shows  us  with  minute  biographi- 
cal detail,  this  process  has  in  all  its  main  particulars 
been  the  work  of  individuals,  or  small  groups  of  indi- 
viduals, who  were  distinguished  from  their  fellows  by 
doing  what  the  mass  of  their  fellows  did  not  do— what 
few  of  them  had  the  enterprise  to  attempt,  fewer  still 
the  genius  to  accomplish,  and  what  most  of  them  had 
not  the  capacity  or  even  the  wish  to  understand.  It 
must,  moreover,  be  noted  that  these  exceptional  men, 
though  many  of  them  had  at  one  time  been  manual 
labourers  themselves,  did  not  increase  the  efficiency  of 
manual  work  generally  by  any  unusual  skill  in  the 
performance  of  such  work  on  their  own  part,  or  indeed 
by  the  performance  of  any  manual  tasks  at  all.  A  man 
like  Watt  added  to  the  productive  forces  of  the  world, 
not  by  means  of  any  engines  which  his  own  hands  had 
fabricated,  but  by  the  influence  which,  through  his 
models  and  instructions,  he  exercised  over  the  hands 
of  others.  And  all  inventors  who  by  means  of  novel 
mechanisms— "  wrought  (as  Herbert  Spencer  says  they 

are)  from  the  very  substance  of  the  inventors'  brains  " 

have  given  men  "a  new  control  over  the  productive 
forces  of  nature,"  have  done  so  as  powerful  thinkers, 
and  not  as  dextrous  craftsmen. 

The  same  considerations  are  no  less  pertinent  as 
applied,  not  to  such  mechanisms  themselves,  but  to  the 
reflex  action  of  these  on  the  conduct  of  the  labourers 
using  them — a  reflex  action  resulting  in  that  new  sub- 
division and  new  co-ordination  of  labour-tasks  by  which, 
Marx  rightly  says,  the  efficiency  of  each  pair  of  hands, 
as  distinct  from  the  mechanisms,  has  been  increased. 
The  argument  of  Marx  implies  that  both  of  these  new 
developments  are  due  to  some  exercise  of  faculties  resi- 
dent in  the  labourers  themselves,  but  previously  latent 
because  there  was  no  scope  for  them.  Let  us,  however, 
consider  in  detail  what  this  new  subdivision  and  co- 
ordination of  labour-tasks  mean. 

When  the  labour-tasks  involved  in  the  production  of 
any  one  finished  article  are  divided,  and  different 
labourers  are  set  to  fashion  different  parts  of  it,  each 


part  must  be  shaped  in  accordance  with  a  settled 
pattern,  so  that  all  the  parts  shall  ultimately  fit  to- 
gether. Now,  when  the  parts  are  few,  when  the  finished 
article  is  of  a  simple  and  unchanging  kind,  and  the 
labourers  are  a  small  group  at  work  in  the  same  shed, 
the  allocation  of  these  tasks,  and  the  precise  nature  of 
each,  can  be  settled  by  the  labourers  themselves.  But 
when  the  number  of  parts  into  which  an  article  is  for 
purposes  of  manufacture  divided  rises,  let  us  say,  from 
four  or  five  to  a  hundred ;  when  the  number  of  labourers 
rises  from  ten  or  twelve  to  a  thousand ;  when  the  prin- 
ciples on  which  the  tasks  are  divided  cease  to  be  merely 
empirical,  and  involve  an  elaborate  knowledge  of  mathe- 
matics, mechanics  and  chemistry;  when  the  character 
of  the  finished  article  itself  has  constantly  to  be  im- 
proved or  modified  in  order  to  meet  new  demands,  and 
when  the  specification  of  each  task  in  particular  requires 
an  alert  ingenuity  of  the  highest  practical  order;  this 
constant  re-devising  and  subdividing  of  tasks  becomes, 
from  the  nature  of  the  case,  a  separate  task  in  itself, 
which  cannot  be  included  in  the  category  of  labour  as 
Marx  defines  it. 

And  the  same  thing  is  true  with  regard  to  the  organisa- 
tion of  the  labourers,  as  distinct  from  the  mere  devising 
of  the  various  tasks  prescribed  to  them.  Organisation 
comprises  the  allotment  of  different  tasks  to  the  most 
suitable  persons ;  an  accurate  timing  of  their  movements 
in  relation  to  one  another,  so  that  no  labour  may  be  lost 
by  preventable  pauses  on  the  one  hand  or  preventable 
overstrain  on  the  other;  and  also  an  alert  inspection  of 
the  work  of  each  individual,  so  that  errors  may  be  seen 
and  rectified  before  any  appreciable  dislocation  of  the 
general  process  has  been  caused  by  them.  Here,  again, 
when  the  labourers  are  few,  and  when  their  different 
tasks  are  few,  and  when  the  interconnection  of  these 
can  be  seen  at  a  glance  by  all,  the  business  in  question 
is  easy,  and  the  labourers  can  accomplish  it  by  talk- 
ing together  as  they  hold  their  tools.  But  when  the 
labourers  are  numbered  by  thousands,  and  their  different 
tasks  by  hundreds,  the  business  of  organising  the  exe- 
cution of  these  last  changes  like  the  business  of  devising 
them,  and  changes  for  like  reasons.     Whoever  may  be 


I'  JM 


104     LIMITS   OF   PURE  DEMOCRACY 

*^if-  Pf ^^^^^  ^y  whom  this  business  is  performed,  it  is  one 
which  engages  their  entire  time  and  attention;  and  it 
cannot  be  performed  by  labourers  whose  efficiency  in 
manual  task-work,  according  to  the  argument  of  Marx 
himself,  depends  on  the  fact  that  each  of  them  gives  his 
tmie,  his  attention  and  his  hands  to  manual  task-work, 
and  one  kind  of  task-work  only. 

With  regard,  then,  to  the  several  arguments  by  which 
Marx  seeks  to  exhibit  the  unapproached  efficiency  of  the 
modern  industrial  process  as  due  to  capacities  which, 
in  the  course  of  a  single  century,  have  come  to  life  in 
the  persons  of  the  manual  labourers  themselves,  and  in 
all  of  them  to  an  equal  extent,  what  we  have  seen  thus 
far  has  been  this:   Firstly,  that  '* man's  new  control 
over  the  productive  forces  of  nature  "  which  is  embodied 
and  concentrated  in  mechanisms  such  as  those  of  the 
modern  factory,  instead  of  being  due  in  any  sense  to  the 
manual  labourers  generally,  is  due  to  the  activities  of  a 
small  minority  of  individuals— activities  which  are  not 
m  the  nature  of  manual  labour  at  all.     Secondly,  we 
have  seen  that,  though  the  use  of  each  great  mechanism 
by  a  large  number  of  labourers  has  resulted  in  a  new 
subdivision  and  a  new  organisation  of  labour  which  has 
enabled   the   labourers   personally  to   operate   with   in- 
creased effect,  the  actual  business  of  subdividing  and 
organising  no  more  belongs  to  the  category  of  labour,  as 
Marx  defines  it,  than  the  solitary  ferments  of  knowledge 
and  constructive  imagination  which  take  place  only  in 
the  brain  of  the  practical  genius,  and  to  which  the  world 
owes  the  steam-engine,  the  telephone  and  the  electric 
light.     In   other   words,    whatever   increased   efficiency 
may  m  modern  times  have  been  acquired  by  the  hands 
of  the  labourers  themselves  through  new  organisations 
of  their  hand-work,  is  primarily  due  to  men  who  mav 
never  have  touched  a  tool. 

And  here  we  are  brought  at  last  to  the  heart  of  our 
present  question.  Human  beings,  as  they  come  into 
the  world  to-day,  are  very  much  the  same  as  they  were 
m  any  previous  century;  and,  whatever  the  activities 
niay  be  to  which  the  increased  industrial  efficiency  of 
the  modern  world  is  due,  they  were  always  in  a  potential 
form,  as  plentiful  as  they  are  now.     How,  then,  is  it  that 


FISSION   OF  EFFORT  105 

from  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century  onwards  thev 
have  produced,  and  are  still  producing,  effects  on  in- 
dustry which  they  never  produced  before  ?  What  new 
condition  of  things  is  everywhere  at  the  bottom  of  this 
unexampled  change? 

This  is  the  crucial  question ;  and  Marx  himself,  though 
he  completely  misses  the  answer,  and  could  indeed  not 
have  admitted  it  without  destroying  the  whole  fabric 
of  his  economic  doctrines,  approaches  it  very  nearly, 
la^t  ^^^^^  ^*^^  necessary  to  reach  it  except  the 

Having  assumed  that,  through  the  possession  of  new 
mechanisms   of  production,   labour  has  gained   a  new 
control  over  the  productive  forces  of  nature,  the  one 
other  cardinal  fact,  on  which  he  insists  as  explaining  the 
mcreased  efficiency  of  ordinary  or  average  hand-work,  is, 
as  we  have  seen,  a  new  subdivision  of  labour-tasks  into 
ever  simpler  parts,  so  that  the  work  of  each  man's  hands 
becomes  more  rapid  and  easier.     Now,  in  order  to  under- 
stand what  his  full  meaning  is  we  must  remember  his 
emphatic  assertion  that  actual  labour,  as  performed  by 
a  living  man,  is  in  itself  a  process  not  single,  but  dual. 
il.ven  the  simplest  manual  operation,  such  as  that  of 
sorting  nails  according  to  their  different  sizes,  involves 
the  activity   not  of  a  man's  hands  only,  but  also  of  his 
mind   by   which   the   action   of  his   hands   is   directed. 
Hence,  m  pointing  to  a  subdivision  of  labour-tasks  as  a 
cause  of  increased  productivity  on  the  part  of  the  indi- 
vidual   labourer,    Marx   means   that    when   a    labourer 
devotes  himself  to  one  kind  of  task  alone,  not  his  hands 
only,    but   his    directing   intelligence    also,    acquires    a 
quickness  and  certitude  not  otherwise  possible. 

But  here  the  argument  of  Marx,  so  far  as  it  relates  to 
the  division  of  task-work,  stops.  It  stops  short  iust 
where  It  ought  to  begin.  He  is  right  in  asserting  that 
the  efficiency  of  the  modern  system  of  production  is 
closely  associated  with  the  principle  of  division  some- 
how; but  the  kinds  of  division  with  which  alone  he 
concerns  himself  are  secondary  phenomena  only.  They 
are  the  consequences  of  another  division  which  is  very 
much  more  profound.  This,  which,  in  respect  of  the 
extent  to  which  it  has  been  carried  out,  is  the  root- 


106     LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 


peculiarity  of  the  modern  system  of  production,  is  not 
a  subdivision  of  one  manual  task  into  several  or  a  large 
number;  it  is  a  division  of  that  composite  activity 
which  the  execution  of  all  manual  tasks  involves  into 
its  two  component  parts — the  manual  part  and  the 
mental — so  that  these  are  no  longer  performed  by  the 
same  persons.  A  limited  control  over  the  operations 
of  his  own  hands  is,  of  course,  necessarily  left  to  the 
manual  labourer  himself ;  but  all  intellectual  direction  of 
the  higher  and  more  comprehensive  kinds  is  transferred 
to  a  new,  a  separate  and  a  numerically  small  class,  whose 
sole  connection  with  labour  consists  in  the  business  of 
directing  it. 

This  fission  of  industrial  effort  into  the  manual  and 
the  purely  mental,  like  the  fission  of  a  single  cell,  first 
shows  itself  in  a  very  rudimentary  form.  Whenever 
more  than  a  score  of  manual  labourers  are  gathered 
together  in  a  shed,  or  (as  Adam  Smith  calls  it)  a  single 
"workhouse,"  for  the  purpose  of  making  and  putting 
together  four  or  five  separate  parts  of  any  simple  product 
such  as  a  pin,  some  record  has  to  be  kept  of  the  output 
of  each  group,  so  that  the  multiplication  of  no  one  part 
shall  be  more  rapid  or  less  rapid  than  the  multiplication 
of  the  others.  When  the  total  output  is  small,  these 
simple  arithmetical  records  can  be  made  by  the  labourers 
themselves;  but  as  soon  as  the  business  expands,  these 
records,  though  arithmetically  they  will  be  no  less  simple 
than  before,  will  be  such  that  a  man  or  a  boy  must  give 
his  entire  time  to  them.  The  work  of  the  manual 
labourers  must  be  supplemented  by  that  of  the  clerk. 
Here  at  once  we  have  a  fission  of  industrial  work  into 
manual  work  and  mental ;  but  it  is  a  fission  which  is 
embryonic  only,  and  gives  no  hint  of  the  effects  which 
are  peculiar  to  it  when  it  is  carried  farther.  The  work 
of  the  clerk  who  counts  what  the  labourers  do  is  no  more 
difficult  than  theirs.  All  we  can  say  is  that  the  two 
kinds  of  work  are  different,  and  are  naturally  assigned  to 
two  classes  of  men.  The  effects  of  this  fission,  which  are 
peculiar  to  it  as  a  cause  of  increased  production,  do  not 
begin  to  be  apparent  till  the  action  of  the  mental  workers 
no  longer  merely  records  the  various  operations  of  the 
manual,  but  begins  at  the  same  time  to  alter  and  dictate 


INDIVIDUAL  BRAIN-WORK         lOT 

their  details,  and  whilst  rendering  these  last  individually 
more  simple,  becomes  in  itself  more  complex. 

oli  i^  u  ""^^  ^^  illustrated  by  an  example  which  has 
already  been  used  as  illustrating  by  way  of  analogy  the 
problem  mvolved  m  complex  political  government  All 
tne  higher  applications  of  mental  activity  to  manual 
may  be  typified  by  one  which,  as  Herbert  Spencer  says, 
IS  actually  amongst  the  most  important  of  them.  That 
il;!^  ^%'  I  application  to  industry,  not  of  a  simple 
arithmetic  which  counts  the  pieces  of  matter  affected  by 

K?f  Jt^T'^'^r^^'^'^"'  ^"*  ^^  *^c  higher  mathematics, 
by  which  application  the  movements  of  the  labourers' 
hands  in  dealing  with  matter  are  modified.     In  propor- 

orwhtev.^'  ^"'^*^'"'^*^^f^  knowledge  is  abstruse 
ZJh  .^  joint  efficiency  of  any  group  of  labourers 
depends,  the  number  of  persons  diminishes  by  whom 
the  requisite  knowledge  is  possessed,  or  who  have  even 
the  capacity  for  acquiring  it.  High  mathematical 
genius,  as  everybody  knows,  is  rare.  The  union  of  it 
with  practical  genius  is  notoriously  rarer  still.  And  of 
all  the  other  purely  mental  activities  by  which  industrial 
production  is  affected  the  same  thing  holds  good.  In 
proportion  to  the  extent  of  their  influence  in  augmentina 
the  output  of  industry  generally,  the  number  of  persons 
in  whom  they  are  to  be  found  is  small. 

Let  us  suppose,  then,  that  some  particular  industry 
is  prosecuted,  as  it  might  have  been  in  the  days  of 
Adam  Smith,  in  a  hundred  "workhouses  "  by  a  hundred 
groups  of  labourers,  each  group  consisting  of  twenty  men  • 
and  let  us  suppose,  further,  that  in  one  of  these  separate 
groups  one  labourer  out  of  the  twenty  happens  to 
develop  a  genius  like  that  of  a  Watt  or  an  Edison,  and 
quadruples  the  output  of  this  particular  group  by  ceasing 
to  operate  with  his  own  hands  himself,  and  merely 
showing  each  of  the  nineteen  others  how  his  hands  from 
moment  to  moment  may  be  used  to  the  best  advantage. 
In  that  case  the  rest  of  the  labour-groups  will  find  them- 
selves m  a  condition,  not  of  absolute,  but  of  relative 
helplessness,  and  their  natural  tendency  will  be  to  unite 
with  the  group  in  which  a  man  of  genius  is  present,  so 
that  the  benefit  of  his  guidance  may  be  extended  to  all 


'^ 


108     LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 

Here  we  have  the  true  underlying  cause  of  the  modern 
clustering  of  the  manual  labourers  in  large  groups 
instead  of  remaining  in  small  ones,  or  instead  of  working 
singly.  The  centres  round  which  they  cluster  are  not 
what  Marx  or  the  ordinary  socialist  supposes.  These 
priniarily  are  not  great  mechanisms,  but  the  mental 
efficiencies  of  exceptionally  able  individuals,  to  which 
the  mechanisms  themselves  are  due,  and  to  which  are 
due  also  the  new  organisation  of  the  labourers,  and  the 
new  subdivisions  of  their  tasks.  By  means  of  such  a 
clustering,  exceptional  individuals  such  as  these  are 
enabled  to  do  the  thinking  for  thousands  and  tens  of 
thousands  of  average  men,  so  that  each  of  these  last — 
even  the  most  incapable  of  them — is  in  turn  enabled  to 
execute  his  own  special  piece  of  hand-work  precisely  as 
it  would  have  been  executed  had  he  been  himself  one  of 
the  master  intellects  of  the  world. 

Never  has  this  fact  been  more  dramatically  illustrated 
than  it  has  been  during  the  course  of  the  great  European 
war.  In  every  belligerent  country  the  objects  at  which 
industry  aims  have  been  largely  changed  from  commodi- 
ties for  private  use  and  enjoyment  into  commodities 
or  goods  essential  to  the  preservation  of  national  life, 
such  as  aeroplanes  and  anti-aircraft  guns;  and  in  order 
that  such  weapons  might  be  produced,  the  first  step 
necessary  has  been  this — to  place  the  labour  required 
for  their  construction  under  the  control  of  those  picked 
intellects  who  are  able  to  devise  the  best.  In  industry 
for  normal,  just  as  much  as  for  military  purposes,  this 
fission  of  productive  effort  into  its  two  component 
parts,  so  that  the  highest  intellects  may  control  the 
largest  number  of  hands,  has  been  the  primary  cause 
of  all  that  increased  efficiency  by  which  the  modern 
system  of  production  is  so  sharply  distinguished  from 
all  that  have  gone  before  it.  It  alone  has  rendered 
possible  that  application  of  intellect  to  industrial  effort 
generally  which  has  gained  for  man,  and  which  still 
continues  to  gain  for  man,  "a  new  control  over  the 
productive  forces  of  nature."  In  other  words,  the 
increased  efficiency  of  industry  in  the  modem  world  is 
due  primarily   (though,  as  we  shall  see  hereafter,  not 


SOCIALISTS   ON   OLIGARCHY         109 

iJ^  T  ^°^J°  "*"  ***  consider  what  kind  of  reply  will 

that  industrv  J?'.  °1^^?'  endeavoured  to  maintain 
inat  industry,  as  a  technical  process,  can  conserve  and 
indeed  increase  its  present  producti;e  powers  7nd  vet 
remain  or  become  what  it  was  in  earlier  Ces-a  process 
which  IS  exclusively,  or  even  preponderantly  democratic 


Mil 


CHAPTER   IV 


THE  PRODUCTIVITY   OF  THE  FEW 

If  the  foregoing  argument  be  correct,  one  thing  is  at 
once   evident— namely   that   the   essence   of   industrial 
efficiency  is  the  rule  of  the  Many  by  the  Few,  or  that 
the  modern  system  of  production  is  more  efficient  than 
its  predecessors  precisely  because  it  has  lost  the  char- 
acteristics of  a  pure  democracy.     And,  curiously  enough, 
in  the  writings  of  Marx  himself  there  are  passages  which 
show  that  even  he,  in  moments  of  transitory  insight, 
perceived  that  this  conclusion  had  some  elements  of 
truth  in  it.     Thus,  on  one  occasion  he  compares  the 
labourers  of  the  modern  world  to  a  company  of  instru- 
mentalists performing  some  great   oratorio,   and  adds 
that  no  performance  of  this  kind  would  be  possible  unless 
some  great  composer  had  dictated  to  each  performer 
the  notes  which  he  had  to  play.     In  his  case,  however, 
admissions  of  this  kind  are  merely  like  isolated  boulders, 
brought    down    by   an   intellectual   glacier   from   some 
distant  region  of  thought,  and  deposited  here  and  there 
on  a  plam  with  which  otherwise  they  have  no  connection. 
But  what  Marx  recognised  only  by  fits  and  starts, 
later  industrial  democrats  have  come  to  perceive  more 
clearly.      Thus,    Vorwarts— the   leading   organ    of    the 
industrial   democrats   of   Germany— has   described    the 
Marxian  doctrine  that  all  wealth  is  produced  by  manual 
labourers  as  comparable  to  the  doctrine  of  Thales  that 
the  universe  is  nothing  but  different  forms  of  water. 
The    intellectual    socialists    of   America    repudiate    the 
vulgar  idea  that  the  industrial  functions  of  the  purely 
mental  worker  are  less  apparent  to  them  than  to  any 
other  sane  men.     The  need  of  the  oligarch  in  the  tech- 
nical conduct  of  industry  has  been  clearly  recognised 
by  labour-leaders  in  Italy;  but  of  all  comprehensive 

110 


MONOPOLISTS  OF  ABILITY        ill 

fn^nf '..f"'^u'^°*'y  J*"^'  ^o"-  quotation,  that  which 
bl  Mr  liHn.'  '  w"fu*'*  ^^*'*"'^^  ^^«t  has  been  provided 
se^en  aireadv^Hi^fi'-  •^^J^'  ^f'  ^^^'''  ^«  ^«  have 
"control"  of  nT  f ^'  >ndustrial  democracy  with  the 
control  of  industry  by  what  he  calls  "the  oeoole 
themselves  " ;  and  this  control  they  will,  accordC  to 

5l!;?t'inn^"K\*'y  appropriating  those  impkmen^s  of  pro^ 
duction  which  are  at  present  owned  by  capitalists    and 

"f  to  d'av  'rT'^1"*'  *'^^  ^""'^  ">'  the^nduS  cail 
kL  ^i.-  ^"*'  ^"^  ¥  proceeds,  democrats  must  reniem- 
ber  one  thing-namely,  that  if,  in  their  capacity  of  mere 
possessors,  the  private  monopolists  of  capital  werraH 
dispossessed  to-morrow,  yet,  though  one  monopoly  would 
be  gone,  another  would  still  remlin,  and  one'^ofVkind 
Mr  wlh  ^'  "'  we  can  see,  is  ineradicable.  This,  says 
Jlss^Skv ''^"«"'^'  monopoly  of  industrial  or  busl 
ness  ability    —or  "a  natural  energy  with  which  some 

"rnorbor.'  ""h^  r'}  "^^'l  ^  ™^--  "f  manird 
are  not  born  "and  to  dream,"  he  says,  "of  a  compli- 
cated industria  state  »  from  which  the  influence  oHuch 
men  IS  eliminated,  and  "in  which  the  workman  is  free 

Ind  wHhi"'.*  "k  5'  ^'^'''  ^'*hout  strict  subordination! 
and  without  obedience  to  orders,  is  to  dream,  not  of 
socialism,  but  of  anarchism."  Hence,  according  to  him 
the  business  of  those  thinkers  who  would,  undef  modem 
conditions  place  the  theory  of  industria  democracy  on 
a  practically  defensible  basis,  is  not  to  ignore  these  fects! 
fhl  vf  .''^  *^^*  their  real  significance  is  quite  othe^ 
than  what  it  seems  to  be,  and  that  the  principle  of  in- 

inf  II  /m™'' w  7u  '"  'P'*«  °*  them  remains  intact. 
And  that  Mr.  Webb  is  merely  describing  a  view  which 
he  shares  with  his  brother  intellectuals  in  this  and  in 
other  countries  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  socialists  all 

m^lV  f.r?"''*  ^^""V  ^'"^^  *he  days  of  Marx,  employed 
much  of  their  speculative  ingenuity  in  endeavours  to  get 
over  the  difficulties  which  Mr.  Webb's  language  indi- 
cates, and  which  none  of  them  any  longer  ignore. 

We  will  now  briefly  consider  the  nature  and  the  value 
of  the  arguments  by  which  the  accomplishment  of  this 
feat   has   been   attempted.      These   arguments,   though 

^^nf-K?  .'"  «  ^'^**  u*"/*y,  °^  ^''^S'  «re  i«  substance 
reducible  to  five,  each  of  which  can  be  summarised  in 


li 


li 


112     LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 

a  few  words.  Two  of  them  only  are  deserving  of  any 
serious  consideration.  The  other  three,  though  when 
stated  on  a  platform  they  may  have  some  popular  effect, 
will  be  found  when  considered  soberly  to  be  no  better 
than  claptrap.     We  will  first  dispose  of  these. 

One  of  these  arguments  is  as  follows.  However  com- 
pletely we  may  admit  that  the  efficiency  of  modern 
production  depends  on  a  submission  by  the  great  mass 
of  the  workers  to  the  intellect  and  technical  guidance 
of  the  specially  gifted  Few,  yet  if  this  submission  is  an 
act  of  free  consent,  the  Many  in  the  very  surrender  of 
their  own  judgments  are  exercising  them,  and  the  system 
which  requires  the  surrender  thus  expresses  the  will  of 
an  industrial  democracy  after  all.  Of  this  argument 
it  is  enough  here  to  observe  that  it  does  but  emphasise 
what  nobody  in  his  senses  will  deny— namely  the  action 
of  the  democratic  principle  as  one  element  of  the  situa- 
tion; but  it  does  not  disprove — on  the  contrary,  it 
implicitly  admits— the  active  operation  of  the  principle 
of  oligarchy  as  its  counterpart.  The  harmonious  work- 
ing of  any  system,  whether  democratic  or  otherwise, 
requires  the  willing  consent  of  all  parties  engaged  in  it ; 
but  the  fact  that  the  Many  consent  to  be  guided  by  the 
Few  would  no  more  prove  that  oligarchy  was  pure  demo- 
cracy in  disguise  than  the  fact  that  a  patient  chooses  his 
own  doctor  proves  that  the  patient  is  the  author  of  his 
own  prescriptions.  If  the  two  things  were  the  same 
thing,  all  doctors  would  be  superfluous. 

A  second  argument,  which  may  be  dismissed  with 
equal  brevity,  is  this.  However  important  the  fact  that 
in  modern  production  a  few  persons  must  direct  the 
technical  operations  of  the  many,  this  does  not  mean 
that  the  few,  considered  as  human  beings,  are  in  any 
way  more  capable  than  the  great  mass  of  their  fellows. 
It  merely  means  that  they  have,  by  some  chance  or 
other,  been  chosen  to  exercise  what  are  necessarily 
exceptional  functions.  The  great  directors  of  labour, 
whatever  the  talents  may  be  which  appear  to  distinguish 
them  from  the  mass,  resemble  a  watcher  on  a  hill,  who 
signals  to  an  army  on  one  side  of  it  the  movements  of 
an  army  on  the  other.  The  signals  of  this  one  man  may 
influence  the  actions  of  thousands ;  but  any  unit  of  these 


I 


<t 


SOCIALIST  APOLOGETICS  113 

In  other  wordfi;  th^  ^  °?  ^f'^  influential  than  he. 
not  at  the  botiom  of  fh"^}  ***  industrial  life  men  are 

conspicuous  abSes    bn^'thl^''  "'^  '^^^  '^^^^  '^'^ 

abilities  beca».i  tht'  f  ^  exercise  no  conspicuous 

This  aiument  does ^nd!!'./^**'"  *'°"T  °*  ^^^  <^^^^^- 
it  formf  o"e  of  the  model  fl'"'""  *°  ^e  noticed,  for 
popular  oratorv  •  h?.*  •  ^^^'^."""^^  °^  t^e  lowest 

the^greL?dSrTof"inJ^;t    '*  "  '"'^  *«.  P'^*^"^  that 

only  as  trSator^J/^'r^^i^.^e^^^^^^  ^P^'^*^? 
inventions  and  methods  ami  tZ-Tl'  ,  ^^^  ^^^  °^ 
of  new  knowledgTgenerallv      iJLn '^"'*"^l^PP"'=^*'°" 

app  y  it  who  nleasps  nnH  ir.  P'°P.^"y-  Any  one  can 
the  initiator"  and  ff  it  "  P""*^*"^^  ''^^«™^  ^^"^1  to 

legarS  s/lil'^reu7e"t  Thrn*%^"^  °*^' 
intprPQf  \r.  ^ul         {T^    secure    tor    the    mitiators    some 

would  at  once  diffuse  itself  through  tL^whole  induS 
mass,  no  trace  beinjr  Mt  nf  ifo       •   •   ^."^^^  industrial 

men  i„  prp?»  UXya^r^'.^bSSSS  \'" 
child  can  assimilate  the  contents  of T S'  u  ,1 
arithmetic;  but  a  hundred  men  might  Hvt'wl  the' 
works  of  Newton  before  them,  and  on!y  one'L^n'out^ol 


t? 


114     LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 

the  hundred  be  able  to  grasp  their  meaning.  Any 
schoolboy  to-day,  after  reading  a  page  of  instructions, 
can  make  a  pound  of  gunpowder  which  is  better  than 
Roger  Bacon's,  or  a  model  steam-engine  which  in  prin- 
ciple is  more  perfect  than  the  engines  of  Newcomen. 
But  when  from  the  world  of  pastime  we  pass  to  that  of 
practical  modern  life,  in  which  the  object  of  industry  is 
to  multiply  as  well  as  to  make  commodities,  in  which 
steam-engines  are  as  big  as  houses,  and  steamships  are 
as  long  as  streets,  problems  arise  which  in  the  world 
of  pastime  are  absent ;  and  these  demand  for  their  solu- 
tion, not  only  a  knowledge  which  few  can  completely 
master,  though  books  may  contain  it  which  any  dunce 
can  buy.  They  demand  a  knowledge  of  a  different  kind 
also,  which  is  not  transmissible  by  books,  or  even  by 
living  example,  and  which  those  who  possess  it  owe  to 
the  favour  of  nature  only.  This  is  the  knowledge  of 
how  to  manage  men,  and  this,  in  the  world  of  industry, 
no  more  becomes  common  property  because  certain 
individuals  have  already  possessed  and  exhibited  it,  than 
the  powers  of  a  great  general  transmit  themselves  to  any 
nervous  book-worm  who  puzzles  himself  over  Caesar's 
Commentaries.  The  argument,  then,  that  the  powers  of 
an  industrial  oligarchy  are,  as  fast  as  they  are  success- 
fully exercised,  converted  into  the  powers  of  a  demo- 
cracy, is,  in  so  far  as  it  is  true,  so  limited  in  its  range 
of  application  that  the  question  here  at  issue  is  not  even 
appreciably  affected  by  it. 

Contrasted  with  these  three  arguments,  and  altogether 
rejecting  them,  are  two  others,  of  quite  different  kinds, 
each  of  which  in  a  sense  is  true,  and  would,  were  it 
only  relevant,  be  doubtless  of  great  importance. 

The  first  of  these  is  an  argument  which,  though 
specially  applied  to  industry  by  the  doctrinaires  of  in- 
dustrial democracy,  is  applied  by  others  to  human  action 
of  all  kinds.  It  begins  with  admitting  that  if  men  are 
in  reality  what  to  vulgar  observation  they  seem  to  be — 
namely,  so  many  separate  units  whose  faculties  are  self- 
existent — what  seems  to  be  industrial  oligarchy  is  pre- 
cisely the  thing  it  seems,  and  the  idea  of  industrial 
democracy  must  be  given  up  as  a  delusion.  If,  how- 
ever, under  the  searchlight  of  sociological  science  we 


INDUSTRIAL  MONISM  115 

look  below  the  surface  of  things  and  see  them  as  they 
really  are,  we  shall  see  that  the  individuals  who  present 
themselves  as  the  Few  and  the  Many  are  not  self-existent 
or  mdependent  entities  at  all.     In  any  given  society  the 
great  men  and  the  average  men  alike  are  what  they  are, 
and  are  able  to  do  what  they  do,  only  because,  like 
variously-tempered   puppies   who   have   come   into   the 
world  together,  they  are  all  products  of  a  common  cor- 
porate  past       Hence,    if   a   certain   minority   of  them 
happen  to  have  derived  from  their  ancestors  a  larger 
share  of  mdustrial  ability  than  the  rest,  this  share  is  the 
result  of  an  age-long  social  struggle,  to  which  the  strong 
and  the  weak  were  both  necessary  parties.     It  does  not 
belong  properly  to  the  present  possessors  of  it  them- 
selves, but  is  merely  a  temporary  deposit  drawn  from  a 
common  store.     So  far  as  the  possessors  are  concerned. 
It  is,  says  Mr.   Sidney  Webb,  "nothing  more  than  a 
species  of  unearned  increment,"  and,  herein  resembling 
the  unearned  increment  of  rent,"  it  belongs  not  to 
them,  but  to  society,  or  the  community  as  a  democratic 
whole. 

Now,  of  this  argument  it  is  sufficient  to  say  here  that 
it  IS  merely  an  application  to  industry  of  a  wider  philo- 
sophic conception  which  is  as  old  as  human  thought— 
namely,  the  conception  of  the  All  or  the  One  as  the 
reality  which  is  behind  the  Many.     According  to  this 
conception  of  things,  which  appears  in  various  forms  as 
f'antheism.  Determinism,  and  mental  or  material  Mon- 
ism, the  existence  of  the  separate  personality  is  alto- 
gether a  delusion.     There  is  no  question  of  whether  one 
mdividual  does  or  produces  more  or  less  than  another. 
1  he  indivisible  Whole,  whether  God  or  the  Universe,  or 
(as  Herbert  Spencer  called  it)  the  Unknowable,   does 
and  produces  everything.     The  individual,  as  a  separate 
entity    does  or  produces  nothing.     Now,  as  a  matter  of 
speculative  logic,   this   doctrine  may  be  impregnable; 
but  as  Kant,  Hume,  St.  Augustine,  and  (we  may  add) 
common  sense  point  out,  the  moment  we  attempt  to 
apply  It  to  practical  life  philosophers  and  ordinary  men 
reject  it  alike  as  nonsense.     If  Socrates  quarrels  with 
his  wife   he   is  quarrelling  with   Xantippe;   he   is   not 
quarrelling  with  the  Universe.     If  a  murder  has  been 


116    LIMITS  OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

committed  we  look  for  the  individual  murderer,  on  the 
ground  that  he  is  the  criminal  and  other  people  are 
innocent.  If  we  want  a  great  picture  painted  we  look 
for  an  individual  artist,  on  the  ground  that  he  can  pamt 
it  and  most  individuals  cannot.  That  is  to  say,  we 
assume,  for  all  practical  purposes,  that  individuals 
really  do  what  they  seem  to  do ;  and  unless  we  assumed 
this  there  would  be  no  dealing  with  anybody.  The 
application  of  these  criticisms  to  the  industrial  process 
is  obvious.  The  "monopolists  of  business  ability,"  as 
a  matter  of  practical  experience,  are  as  radically  different 
from  the  average  units  directed  by  them  as  a  man  who 
murders  his  mother  in  order  to  steal  her  savings  is  dif- 
ferent from  a  mother  next  door  who  is  teaching  her  child 
its  prayers.  They  are  able  to  do  things,  and  they  do 
things,  which  are  not  done  and  which  cannot  be  done 
by  others ;  and  unless  these  differences  were  recognised, 
no  complex  business  of  any  kind  would  be  possible.  The 
philosophy  of  industrial  Monism,  by  which  these  differ- 
ences are  obscured,  may  amuse  the  philosopher  in  his 
study;  but  if  preached  in  a  factory  or  a  shipyard  it 
would  be  the  maundering  of  a  strayed  lunatic. 

The  last  of  the  arguments  which  are  urged  with  the 
object  of  showing  that  industrial  democracy  combined 
with  unambiguous  oligarchy  is  nothing  but  a  mode  of 
pure  democracy  after  all,  still  remains  to  be  considered. 
It  is  in  many  respects  a  great  improvement  on  the  pre- 
ceding.    Moreover,  the  credit  is  due  to  it  of  having,  for 
the  benefit  of  the  practical  agitator,  replaced  the  doc- 
trine of  Marx  that  all  wealth  is  the  product  of  manual 
labour  only,  by  another,  equally  popular  in  its  sugges- 
tions, but  less  open  to  criticism  on  the  part  of  common 
intelligence.     This  is  the  argument  that  wealth  is  the 
product,  not  of  labour,  but  of  society.     It  is  an  argu- 
ment which  in  certain  ways  is  a  great  improvement  on 
the  preceding,  because  instead  of  being  an  exercise  in 
the  logic  of  remote  speculation,  it  addresses  itself  frankly 
to  the  world  of  concrete  fact.     It  admits  that  men  must 
be  treated  as  separate  entities  varying  greatly^  in  the 
scope  of  their  industrial  powers,  some  men  directing 
and  others  submitting  to  direction;  and  yet  aims  at 
establishing  the  industrial  equality  of  all,  not  by  eluding 


MILL  ON  EQUAL  NECESSITY      117 

or  transcending  these  facts,  but  by  facing  them.  It  is, 
therefore,  as  a  weapon  of  popular  agitation,  very  much 
more  in  vogue  than  any  of  the  four  others.  It  may  be 
summed  up  thus.  However  unequal  may  be  the  efforts 
of  individual  producers  otherwise,  such  as  those  of  the 
genius  and  those  of  the  average  labourer,  they  are  prac- 
tically equal  in  the  fact  that  they  are  all  equally  neces- 
sary.    Necessity  has  no  laws;  it  also  has  no  degrees. 

The  contention  that  all  industrial  factors  in  produc- 
tion are  in  a  practical  sense  equal  if  they  are  equally 
necessary  for  the  production  of  a  given  result,  was  first 
formulated  by  Mill,  in  connection  with  the  business  of 
agriculture.  Some  thinkers,  he  observes,  referring  to 
the  French  physiocrats,  have  debated  whether,  of  a 
given  agricultural  product— such,  for  example,  as  twenty 
bushels  of  corn — land  or  labour  produces  the  larger  part. 
All  such  questions  as  this,  however,  he  declares  to  be 
void  of  meaning;  and  he  explains  this  statement  by 
laying  down  the  following  principle.  Whenever  two 
causes,  however  different  otherwise,  are  both  so  neces- 
sary to  the  production  of  what  he  calls  "the  effect" 
that  this  (which  in  the  present  case  is  agricultural 
produce)  could,  if  either  were  wanting,  not  be  produced 
at  all,  it  is  idle  to  say  that  most  of  it  is  produced  by  one 
or  the  other,  for  the  absence  of  either  would  make  the 
difference  between  the  production  of  a  given  effect  or 
none.  Thus,  he  adds  by  way  of  illustration,  it  is  idle 
to  ask  whether,  if  2  be  multiplied  by  10,  the  2  or  the  10 
does  most  in  producing  the  number  20 ;  for  if  either  the 
10  or  the  2 — no  matter  which — were  altered,  the  pro- 
duction of  the  20  would  be  equally  out  of  the  question. 
This  argument  which  Mill  applies  to  land  and  labour  is 
that  which  is  now  applied  by  the  theorists  of  industrial 
democracy  to  average  manual  labourers  and  ''  the  mono- 
polists of  ability  "  who  direct  them. 

Now,  if  we  make  certain  suppositions,  the  argument 
of  Mill  is  correct.  One  of  these  is  that  land  is  a  constant 
quantity,  the  other  is  that  "the  effect"  is  a  constant 
quantity  also.  Thus,  if  there  were  only  one  acre  of  land 
in  the  world,  and  if  the  effect  were  always  twenty  bushels 
of  corn  or  nothing,  it  would  doubtless  be  impossible  to 
say   that   the   land   produced   more    bushels   than   the 


118     LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 


labourer  or  the  labourer  more  bushels  than  the  land. 
But  in  the  actual  world  of  agriculture  there  is  not  one 
acre  only;  there  are  many — which  acres  vary  greatly  in 
quality.  Further,  the  joint  produce  of  an  acre  of  land 
and  a  labourer  is  not  a  given  number  of  bushels  or 
nothing.  The  whole  question  of  produce  is  a  question 
of  less  or  more;  and  if  the  same  labourer  were  trans- 
ferred from  a  bad  acre  to  a  better  one,  and  if  thereupon 
"the  effect"  rose  from  twenty  bushels  to  thirty,  we 
should  at  once  be  able  to  say  that,  in  a  very  practical 
sense,  the  extra  ten  bushels  were  the  product,  not  of  the 
labourer,  but  of  the  land.  Indeed,  Mill  elsewhere  insists 
on  this  very  fact  himself ;  for  in  one  of  his  own  chapters 
he  explains  with  great  lucidity  that  an  extra  product  of 
this  kind  is  distinguishable  as  economic  rent,  and  goes 
to  the  recipient  solely  because  the  land  is  his.  On  the 
same  principle,  the  matter  may  be  put  conversely.  If 
the  same  acre  of  land  is  tilled  successively  by  two  dif- 
ferent labourers,  and  if  when  it  is  tilled  by  the  one  there 
is  a  product  of  twenty  bushels,  and  when  it  is  tilled  by 
the  other  there  is  a  product  of  thirty,  we  are  able  to  say 
that,  in  a  strictly  practical  sense,  the  extra  product  is 
produced  by  the  superior  efficiency  of  the  second. 

And  the  same  argument  applies  to  the  industrial  pro- 
cess generally  in  respect  of  the  parts  now  played  by  the 
manual  workers  on  the  one  hand  and  the  mental  direc- 
torate on  the  other.  If  the  producers  of  any  commodity 
— let  us  say,  for  example,  boots — were  always  one  small 
group  of  nineteen  manual  labourers,  whilst  a  twentieth 
man  directed  them;  and  if  '*the  effect"  of  their  joint 
efforts  were  always  the  same  likewise — say,  forty  pairs 
of  boots  in  a  week ;  and  if,  moreover,  unless  the  tale  of 
forty  pairs  of  boots  were  completed,  the  whole  output 
would  be  worthless  or  would  vanish  into  thin  air;  it 
would  then  be  impossible  to  say  that  the  director  pro- 
duces more  boots  than  any  one  of  his  workers  or  fewer. 
But  if  the  director  absented  himself  for  a  year,  and  his 
place  was  taken  by  a  labourer  no  better  and  no  worse 
than  the  rest,  and  if  thereupon  the  weekh'  product  fell 
from  forty  pairs  of  boots,  not  to  none,  but  to  twenty 
pairs;  and  if,  when  the  director  returned  and  resumed 
his  duties,  the  product  forthwith  rose  from  twenty  pairs 


PRACTICAL   CAUSATION 


119 


of  boots  to  forty ;  we  should  then  be  able  to  say  that,  in 
a  very  practical  sense,  that  twenty  pairs  of  boots  were 
the  product  of  the  director  alone.  In  other  words,  any 
mental  director  of  a  group  of  co-operating  workers  pro- 
duces so  niuch  of  the  joint  output  as  would  cease  to  be 
produced  if  his  mental  functions  were  suspended,  and 
would  be  produced  again  when  the  exercise  of  these 
functions  was  renewed. 

Those,  however,  whose  object  is  to  evade  this  conclu- 
sion will  endeavour  to  do  so  by  the  method  of  a  reductio 
ad  absurdum  thus.  If  it  is  true,  they  will  say,  that  the 
mental  director  of  labour  produces  so  much  of  a  product 
as  the  labourers  whom  he  directs  could  not  have  pro- 
duced without  him — let  us  say  one-half  of  it — it  must 
be  equally  true  that  the  labourers  produce  the  whole, 
because  in  the  absence  of  the  labourers  the  director 
could  have  produced  nothing.  This  argument,  though 
absolutely  worthless,  is  interesting  and  demands  atten- 
tion; for  its  worthlessness  is  due  to  a  fact  which  is  not 
superficially  apparent.  Its  worthlessness  lies  in  the  fact 
that  it  is  false  to  the  essential  principle  on  which  all 
reasoning  of  a  practical  kind  rests.  All  reasoning  which 
precedes  and  determines  action  is  in  its  very  nature 
hypothetical,  and  reduces  itself  to  the  following  formula  : 
"  If  I  do  this  or  that  particular  thing  it  will  be  the  cause 
of  this  or  that  result."  Thus  a  man,  if  he  puts  a  match 
to  shavings,  reasons  that  if  he  does  so  he  will  cause  them 
to  catch  fire.  When  a  man,  seeing  a  fire,  throws  a 
bucket  of  water  over  it,  he  reasons  that  if  he  does  so  he 
will  cause  the  fire  to  cease.  But  there  is  another  kind 
of  reasoning — namely,  that  of  the  thinker  whose  province 
is  not  action,  but  speculation;  and  for  him  neither  tfie 
match  nor  the  water  will  have  been  the  cause  of  the 
results  in  question.  They  will  each  of  them  have  been 
but  one  cause  out  of  countless  causes  all  equally  neces- 
sary, such  as  those  which  have  caused  water  and  trees  to 
exist,  the  action  of  gravity,  and  the  existence  and  com- 
position of  the  atmosphere.  But  with  causes  such  as 
these  the  practical  reason  has  no  concern  whatever. 
The  man  who  applies  the  match  and  the  man  who 
applies  the  water  do  not  ask  what  would  happen  if  the 
law  of  gravitation  were  suspended,  or  if  water,  wood, 


120     LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 

and  air  became  things  other  than  they  are.  Out  of  a 
countless  number  of  hypotheses  they  concern  themselves 
with  two  only.  On  what  principle,  then,  is  this  selection 
made  ?  The  answer  is  that  the  hypotheses  with  which 
practical  reason  concerns  itself  relate  to  such  acts  alone 
as  on  any  given  occasion  may  either  be  performed  or 
not  be  performed,  according  as  the  practical  reason  of 
human  beings  determines. 

Let  us  now  apply  this  principle  to  the  two  special 
hypotheses  with  which  we  are  here  concerned — namely, 
those  relating  to  labour  and  a  purely  mental  directorate. 
We  shall  see  that,  in  computing  the  product  of  any 
director  of  labour  as  so  much  of  the  total  as  would  not 
be  produced  on  the  hypothesis  that  he  ceased  to  direct, 
we  are  arguing  in  accordance  with  the  laws  of  practical 
reason ;  but  if  we  argue  on  the  counter-hypothesis,  that 
the  labourers  ceased  to  labour,  we  are  indulging  in  a 
speculation  which  practically  has  no  meaning  at  all ;  for 
the  first  hypothesis  represents  a  practical  possibility, 
the   second   does   not.     The   labourers  as   a   whole  can 
never  cease  to  labour,  except  for  very  brief  periods,  for 
if  they  ceased  to  labour  they  would  die,  and  nothing 
would  be  left  to  reason  about ;  but  the  direction  of  labour 
by  the  Mind  of  a  non-labouring  class  is  in  its  present 
form   a   purely   modern   phenomena.     Mankind   existed 
for  thousands  of  years  without  it,  and  if  it  disappeared 
to-morrow  mankind  would  exist  still. 

Hence,  to  say  that  all  wealth  is  produced  by  Society 
—that  IS,  by  the  labour  and  the  mental  director  jointly— 
is  no  doubt  true  enough;  but,  except  for  one  special 
purpose,  with  which  we  will  deal  presently,  it  is  a  truth 
that  tells  us  nothing.  What  we  want  to  know  is,  not 
how  much  these  agents  produce  jointly,  but  how  much 
the  second  adds  to  the  product  of  the  first.  To  say  that 
all  wealth  is  a  social  product  is  like  saying  that  malaria 
IS  a  local  product.  Malaria  prevails  in  some  countries 
It  does  not  prevail  in  others.  All  countries  are,  in  many 
respects,  alike.  All  must  possess,  for  example,  soil,  air 
and  sunshine.  Were  any  of  these  absent  malaria  would 
be  absent  also ;  therefore,  all  these  things  in  a  sense  are 
Its  joint  causes.  But  since  malaria  prevails  in  certain 
localities  only,  some  cause  must  be  present  there  which 


i 


CAUSALITY   OF  THE   FEW  121 

is  not  present  elsewhere ;  and  if  malaria  is  an  evil  which 
men  desire  to  extirpate,  they  must  concern  themselves 
with  the  identification  of  this  exceptional  cause  alone. 
Ihat  cause,  it  has  now  been  discovered,  is  a  fly.     If  the 
lly  IS  extirpated,  malaria  disappears  along  with  it.     If 
the  fly  returns,  malaria  reappears  also.     Thus  the  prac- 
tical reason  concerns  itself  with  this  cause  alone,  for  it 
is  the  only  cause  m  respect  of  which  human  beings  can 
take  action.     They  can  get  rid  of  the  fly,   but  they 
cannot  get  rid  of  earth,  air,  and  sunshine.     If  we  substi- 
tute for  malaria,  as  a  product  which  we  desire  to  abolish, 
an  increased  output  of  wealth,  as  a  product  which  we 
desire  to  retain,  the  case  is  just  the  same.     We  may 
compare  the  directors  of  labour  to  so  many  malarial 
flies.      Wherever   one   settles   the   industrial   output   is 
increased ;  and  just  as  the  fly  is  practically  the  one  cause 
of  malaria,  so  is  the  director  practically  the  one  cause  of 
the  increment— not  of  the  total  product,  but  of  just  so 
much  of  the  total  as  may  happen  to  appear  and  to 
disappear  along  with  him. 

The  application  of  this  argument  is,  however,  as  was 
just  now  observed,  limited  by  one  exception.     When  it 
IS  said  that  all  wealth  is  produced  by  society,  the  word 
society,"  if  it  stands  for  more  than  a  mere  abstraction, 
must  be  used  to  designate  some  society  or  societies  in 
particular,  such,  for  example,  as  the  English,  French, 
or  German.     Now  if,  as  happens  in  war  time,  one  society 
has,  either  as  an  ally  or  an  enemy,   to  consider  the 
efficiency  of  another  from  the  standpoint  of  an  outside 
observer,  then  to  say  that  the  latter  society,  as  a  whole, 
produces  so  much  is  a  really  informative  statement.    It 
IS  so  for  this  reason— that  the  great  practical  question 
for  such  an  observer  is,  not  how  this  total  is  produced, 
but   the   mere   fact   of  its   production.      But   for  each 
society,  in  respect  of  its  own  internal  forces— and  in 
times  of  war  this  is  specially   obvious— the   practical 
question  is  what  are  the  agents  of  production  when  these 
are  considered  separately,  and  what,  when  so  considered, 
is  the  nature  of  their  interaction;  for  it  is  only  when 
matters  are  considered  in  this  way  that  the  conditions 
which  will  result  in  a  maximum  product  are  discoverable. 
For   those,   then,    who   desire   to   understand   what,' 


122     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

within  any  given  society,  different  men,  different  classes 
of  men,  or  different  kinds  of  productive  effort,  contribute 
severally  to  the  product  of  the  society  as  a  whole,  to 
answer  that  the  product  as  a  whole  is  produced  by 
society  as  a  whole,  is  not  to  throw  any  light  on  the  work- 
ings of  these  different  parts,  but  simply  to  hide  them 
from  observation  under  the  tarpaulin  of  a  barren 
platitude. 

The  proposition  that  the  wealth  of  a  society  is  pro- 
duced by  that  society  itself  comes,  if  not  absolutely 
barren,  to  no  more  than  this — that  modern  production 
requires  co-operation  of  some  kind,  or  that  wealth  as  the 
world  now  knows  it  cannot  be  produced  by  a  solitary. 
Here  we  have  a  principle  which  is  applicable,  not  to 
industry  alone,  but  to  nine-tenths  of  all  possible  human 
conduct.  If  a  man  lives  absolutely  alone,  he  cannot 
commit  murder,  for  no  one  exists  into  whom  he  can 
stick  a  knife.  It  is  equally  obvious  that  he  cannot 
commit  perjury,  for  nobody  exists  to  whom  he  can  tell 
a  lie.  He  cannot  exhibit  the  virtue  of  unselfishness,  for 
the  only  person  in  whose  interests  he  can  act  is  himself. 
Such  being  the  case,  it  is  obviously  true,  in  a  sense,  that 
murder  is  a  social  product,  that  perjury  is  a  social 
product,  and  that  heroic  self-sacrifice  is  a  social  product 
likewise.  But  would  this  mean  that  if,  out  of  so  many 
thousand  men,  three  excite  horror  by  murder  or  false 
swearing,  or  public  admiration  by  acts  of  unusual 
heroism,  all  are  equally  criminals  and  equally  moral 
heroes  ?  If  this  were  true,  a  murdered  man  should  be 
hanged  along  with  his  murderer,  for  the  latter  could  not 
have  killed  him  if  he  had  not  been  there  to  kill.  A 
government  which  made  such  an  assumption  would  be 
a  government  fit  for  Bedlam. 

And  what  is  true  of  moral  action  is  equally  true  of 
industrial.  In  the  estimation  of  industrial  forces,  as 
in  the  administration  of  legal  justice,  that  which  has 
to  be  dealt  with  is  the  voluntary  actions,  and  the  results 
of  the  actions,  of  individuals.  If  a  society  of  workers 
in  which  one  man  directs  the  many  produces  more  than 
a  society  in  which  the  many  direct  themselves,  it  is  idle 
to  say  that  society  is  as  truly  the  producer  of  the  larger 
product  as  of  the  less.     The  sole  question  is,  what  pro- 


CALCULUS   OF   PRODUCTION        123 

duces  the  excess  of  the  one  product  over  the  other? 
And  here  we  are  brought  to  the  answer  already  given. 
The  excess  is  produced  by  one  man — namely,  the  direc- 
tor, the  presence  or  the  absence  of  whose  activities  is  the 
only  element  which  differentiates  one  society  from  the 
other.  The  extra  output  is  produced  by  that  one  man 
as  truly  as  malaria  is  produced  by  the  presence  of  the 
malarial  fly. 

This  method  of  reasoning  is  no  mere  exercise  in  the 
logic  of  remote  speculation,  like  that  of  the  Industrial 
Monists.     It  is  the  instinctive  and  inevitable  reasoning 
of  all  practical  men.     This  fact  has  been  brought  into 
prominence  by  the  great  European  war,  as  though  it 
were  lit  up  by  successive  flashes  of  lightning.     War,  to 
an  extent  never  before  paralleled,  has  become  a  war  of 
intellectual  industries  as  well  as  a  war  of  armies.     In 
every  belligerent  country  it  has  made  ceaseless  demands 
on  industrial  intellect  in  both  of  its  two  main  forms — 
the  intellect  which  shows  itself  in  scientific  invention, 
and   the   intellect   which   shows   itself   in  the   scientific 
organisation  of  men ;  and  the  demand  for  each,  wherever 
it  has  found  utterance,  has  always  couched  itself  in  the 
same  inevitable  terms.     The  cry  of  all  parties  alike  has 
not  been  a  cry  addressing  itself  to  "society,"  to  "the 
people  themselves,"  or  to  the  mass  of  average  men. 
It  has  been  a  cry  for  individuals  who  stand  out  from 
the  mass,  and  are  able  to  do  what  the  average  man 
cannot  do.     With  regard  to  the  mechanisms  of  war,  such 
as    (to   quote   an  example  which   has  here  been  used 
already)  an  anti-aircraft  gun,  what  England  has  cried 
out   for  has   been,   in   the   common-sense   words   of   a 
prominent   London   journal,   "  a   new   inventive   brain, 
capable  of  large  generalisations,  and  capable  of  applying 
them  in  detail."     With  regard  to  the  organisation  of  the 
mass  of  average  workers,  these  being  already  in  exist- 
ence,  and   equipped   with   their  normal   faculties,   the 
demand  has  been  for  exceptional  brains  likewise,  which 
shall  organise  these  men  anew  in  accordance  with  new 
requirements.     When  the  food-problem  in  Germany  first 
threatened  to  become  urgent,  this  demand  found  clearer 
and  more  instant  expression  nowhere  than  it  did  in  the 
leading   journal   of  the   Social   Democrats   themselves. 


124    LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

"  What  Germany  wants,"  said  Vorwarts,  "  in  the  present 
internal  crisis  is  one  man  of  large  knowledge  and 
supreme  business  ability."  And  what  do  such  demands 
mean—demands  which  the  stress  of  circumstance  has 
purged  of  fantastic  theory,  and  restored  to  that  common 
sense  by  which  all  men  are  naturally  guided  whether 
they  recognise  the  fact  or  no?  Such  demands  mean, 
when  translated  into  terms  of  their  implications,  that, 
if  Society  IS  to  act  efficiently,  the  mass  of  average 
workers,  of  which  society  is  mainly  composed,  must 
group  themselves  for  industrial  purposes,  not  primarily 
(as  Marx  said)  round  this  or  round  that  great  mechan- 
ism, but  round  certain  centres  of  control  which  are  the 
intellects  and  localised  influence  of  exceptionallv  able 
men.  "^ 

Let  us  suppose,  then,  that  some  exceptional  man 
devises  a  mechanism  or  weapon  of  such  power  and  pre- 
cision that  the  course  of  a  war  is  altered  in  favour  of 
the  country  using  it.  Would  any  one  say  that  the  part 
played  by  a  man  like  this  was  not  distinguishable  and 
not  greater  than  that  which  was  played  by  others  who 
could  merely  cry  out  for  his  appearance,  or  who  helped 
to  construct  this  weapen   in   accordance   with   the   in- 

^^''u^'ll  ^^^^^^  \  ^^^  refutation  of  such  an  opinion  is 
embedded  in  the  very  language  in  which  ordinary 
thought  expresses  itself.  Everybody  would  instinctively 
say,  with  regard  to  the  fortunes  of  war,  that  the  appear- 
ance of  a  man  like  this  "had  made  all  the  difference." 
If  the  case  were  one,  not  of  a  change  in  the  fortunes  of 
war,  but  of  an  addition  to  the  national  output  of 
common  comforts  and  luxuries,  everybody  would  say 
precisely  the  same  thing,  with  the  alteration  of  one  word 
only  Everybody  would  say  that  this  man  had  not 
.i!^^^^^  ^"  *^^  difference,  but  had  "produced"  it— 
the  difference  being  the  difference  between  a  larcer 
output  and  a  less.  ^ 

Such  being  the  case,  then,  it  must  always  be  borne 
m  nimd  that  m  every  industrial  system  which  yields 
a  return  sufficient  to  keep  the  workers  alive,  the  demo- 
cratic  principle,  as  embodied  in  the  hands  of  the  self- 
directed  workers  themselves,  and  producing  a  certain 
minimum,  must  always  be  assumed  as  a  starting-point 


GENIUS   EQUALS  OLIGARCHY      125 

iSsted'^'or  k'^^h^^  '^^^  ^^^^  P^i^t  here 

insisted    on    is,    that    all    modern    additions    to    this 

TontS;  :ht  '}''^^  ''  -PP^-i-ately  constant,  ar^ 
fnte]  Pnf,  1  1  *^^  ^'^^^^'on  of  the  labourers  by  a  purely 
intellectual  class,  or  (as  Mr.  Webb  calls  them)  "the 
natural  monopolists  of  the  best  business  ability."     In 

system'oft^^^^^^^^  ^^  ^^^  ^^  i-P-«ibk 

frtfl  c     .^    ^/^l'"'''  ^"*  '^  '^  a^  inefficient  system.     It 
afterVce'rtaTn^^  '^'  T'^^  1^  '''  babyhood,  ^nd^  trj 
^mw.  in  Pffi       ^^'^-^  '*^^^  ^^  P^^^^^ss  has  been  reached 
femoc  atl    rn'r""  P^^P^^*^^^  ^^  i*  ceases  to  be  puref; 
anU^f n      '  •    "?  becomes  a  system  in  which  two  distin- 
guishable prmciples--the  democratic  and  the  oligarch^ 

^onri  1ntX'en^''"^^'r'  "^  "^^^^^-^'  ^^d  the^excep- 
tional  mtelligences— mteract.     It  is  true  that    even  if 

noL  o^'Xm""^-^  '''''^  ^^^^^  *^-^  own^rectL 
none  of  them  issuing  any  orders  to  others,   a  certain 

tTaTtS  leT'Vutt  'f  ^^^^^^^"^^  more  VroduS 
on^K  I  \u  .*.  *"^  '^'g^r  products  of  individuals 

whth  thn^fhT,'!-'^  be  merely  like  so  many  mo Su  s 
which,  though  hftmg  themselves  here  and  there  f\ia 
nothing  to  alter  the  general  level  of  a  field  "  Socktv  " 
2  oduceTh?''  themselves,"  may,  in  their  capacfty  of 
producers,  be  compared  to  a  regiment  of  soldiers  ordered 
to  move  across  country  to  a  |iven  spot  by  n?ght  and 
possessmg  m  its  ranks  one  man  who  can  see  by  night 
as  well  as  he  can  by  day.     If  such  a  man  directs  his 

wTthThruS  ""'^'  ^^.^^y  '^^'^  *he  spot  in  qu  tion 
Tb  e  bv  hk^rH*,  f  ^"*^  promptitude ;  but  unless  he  is 
able  by  his  orders  to  direct  the  movements  of  the  rest 

Stch'^f  Th"  ^  '"  *  ^^'P'"^^  *«  flounder  or  drown  ?n 
ditches.     The  same  is  the  case  in  industry.    If  a  thou^ 

whatever'frlXT  """"  "^  *«  ^^"^^  -"  be-fi"t 
Tf  exclntili?    -  presence  amongst  them  of  one  man 

thousand  «ni  T°^^:  ''"^  T""  ■""«*  '««"«  orders  to  a 
thousand,  and  the  thousand  must  obey  one  man  •  anrf 

crac^'  Ke  ftof^  ^/  '^^"'*^'>^  dist^nctfr^rderc^ 
aroVchy  in  "he  worfd."^^"  '^^  ''^^'^'  ^"^^  ^  ^^ing 
That  sucK  are  really  the  essential  facts  of  the  situation 
IS  now  being  admitted,  as  Professor  Michels  shows  bv 
various  revolutionary  writers  without  aSy  attempt  to 


126    LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

disguise  the  matter.     The  Itahan  syndicalist,  Labriola, 
insists,  as  we  have  seen  already,  that  political  progress 
can  never  be  the  work  of  the  multitude,  but  can  be 
accomplished  only  by  "an  Slite  who  alone  can  judge  of 
the  interaction  of  social  cause  and  effect";  and  what 
this  writer  says  with  regard  to  political  government, 
other  revolutionary  writers  are  now  saying  with  regard 
to  industry.     Thus  Kautsky,  who  in  some  respects  is  a 
professed  follower  of  Marx,  dismisses  as  impossible  the 
application  of  the  democratic  principle  to  commerce. 
Commerce,   or  commercial  distribution    (which  is  pro- 
duction  in   its  final   stage)   is,   he   says,   "outside   the 
competence  of  the  rank  and  file."    We  may  talk,  he 
proceeds,  of  this  or  that  commercial  business  as  "  co- 
operative";  but  in  the  cases  to  which  this  name  is 
applied,  the  conduct  of  affairs  is  really  in  the  hands  of 
a  few  managers,  unless,  indeed,  "the  customer  can  be 
said  to  co-operate  with  the  shopman  "  whenever  a  bit 
of  ribbon  changes  hands  over  the  counter.      Another 
socialist  critic,  speaking  of  a  business  at  Ghent,  which 
claims  to  be  a  great  example  of  successful  co-operation 
or  democracy,  declares  that  "  it  bears  in  every  detail 
the  imprint  of  the  strong  will  that  has  created  it.     The 
one   man  who   is   its   master  issues  his   orders   in   the 
brusque  and  imperious  tone  of  a  bourgeois  captain  of 
industry;  and  this  is  what  he  practically  is."     It  has, 
says  Professor  Michels,  been  claimed  that  in  societies 
for  co-operative  manufacture,  true  co-operation  is  theo- 
retically far  more  practicable  than  in  commerce.     He 
goes  on,  however,  to  observe — herein  agreeing  absolutely 
with  the  argument  of  the  present  work — that  this  claim 
is  valid  for  groups  of  workers  only,  whose  numbers  are 
small,  and  whose  methods  are  of  the  simplest  kind — 
such,   for  example,   as  ten  or  twelve  village  cobblers 
cutting  and  stitching  leather  at  the  back  of  a  small 
shop.     But  as  soon  as  such  an  industry  increases,  and 
endeavours  by  the  aid  of  science  to  secure  a  larger  out- 
put per  head  of  the  workers  engaged  in  it,  the  case 
entirely  changes.     Technical  subordination  begins,  and 
equal   co-operation   ends.     Thus,   he   says,   one   of  the 
foremost  leaders  of  the  labour  movement  in  Italy  has 
expressed  himself  to  the  following  effect:   "We  have 


SOCIALIST  EVASIONS  127 

learned  by  prolonged  experience  that  those  businesses 
only  can  survive  which  are  headed  by  a  good  organiser. 
Categories  of  the  most  various  trades,  found  in  the  most 
diverse  environments,  have  been  unable  to  secure  organ- 
isation and  to  live  through  crises,  except  in  so  far  as 
tS  affafrs  "^"^  ^^^^  *""  ^"""^  first-class  men  to  manage 

w'^u'^l-^^^  }}'^^M  substantially  what  is  said  by  Mr. 
Webb  himself.     "In  any  complex  system  of  industry  " 
such  as  that  which  prevails  to-day,  the  efficiency  of  the 
workers  as  a  whole  is  the  average  efficiencies  of  the  Many 
multiplied  by  the  efficiencies  of  the  Few— the  Few  whom 
he  describes  as  "the  natural  monopolists"  of  ability, 
and  whose  function  is  to  issue  orders,  whilst  that  of  the 
wu^^  'u  ^^^^"*^  th^^^  with  "strict  obedience." 
Why,   then,   do  he  and  other  democratic  reformers 
endeavour  to  hide  this  fact  by  declaring  that,  "accord- 
mg  to  a  growing  consensus  of  opinion,"  the  inevitable 
outcome  of  democracy  "  is  the  "  control  "  of  production 
by      Society,     or  "the  people  themselves"?     If  "the 
people  themselves  "  include  the  directing  few,  produc- 
tion IS  controlled  by  the  people  themselves  already.     If 
the  people  themselves  are  the  masses,  as  distinct  from 
the  few  and  excluding  them,  then,   according  to  Mr. 
Webb  s  own  opinion,  and  a  growing  consensus  of  revolu- 
tionary  opinion   generally,   no   efficient   production   bv 
the  people  themselves  "  is  possible.     For  what  con- 
ceivable reason,  then,  can  men  not  deficient  in  intelli- 
gence, who  have  seen  with  very  fair  clearness  what  the 
nature  of  the  situation  is,  have  betaken  themselves  to 
reasonings  and  formulae  such  as  those  which  we  have 
]ust  examined,  and  which  are  practically  useless  except 
for  the  purpose  of  obscuring  it?     The  answer  to  this 
question  will  be  indicated  in  the  following  chapter,  and 
It  will  carry  us  on  directly  to  inquiries  of  a  new  order 


BOOK   III 

DEMOCRATIC  DISTRIBUTION  AS  RELATED  TO  THE 

FACTS  OF  PRODUCTION 

CHAPTER   I 

DISTRIBUTION   IN   ENGLAND 

The  explanation  of  the  curious  fact  that  the  demo- 
cratic doctrinaires  of  to-day,  having  come  to  admit  that 
an  efficient  system  of  production  involves  at  all  events 
a  large  element  of  oligarchy,  should  endeavour  to  obscure 
this  truth  under  a  veil  of  pseudo-philosophic  or  wholly 
irrelevant  platitudes,  is  not  to  be  found  in  any  mental 
defect  on  their  part  which  renders  them  liable  to 
oscillate  between  sound  reasoning  and  unsound.  It  is 
to  be  found  in  the  ultimate  object  which  they  practically 
have  in  view.  Their  object  is  not  to  establish  any  theory 
of  production,  however  true,  for  its  own  sake.  Their 
object  is  to  provide,  as  an  instrument  of  popular  agita- 
tion, some  basis  in  principle  for  a  certain  popular 
demand — a  demand  which  relates,  not  to  the  process 
of  production,  but  to  the  manner  in  which  the  products 
are,  and  the  manner  in  which  they  ought  to  be, 
distributed. 

The  content  of  this  demand,  which  in  all  countries 
is  the  same,  is  plainly  expressed  in  the  latter  of  the  two 
clauses  which  make  up  Mr.  Webb's  account  of  "  the 
inevitable  outcome  of  democracy."  Having  said  that 
the  immediate  outcome  is  the  control  of  production  by 
what  he  calls  "the  people  themselves,"  he  goes  on  to 
explain  that  the  ultimate  end  in  view  is  the  "  recovery 
by  the  people  themselves  "  of  a  certain  share  of  the 
product  which  is,  under  the  existing  system,  appropriated 
by  mere  "possessors." 

128 


INCOME  FROM  POSSESSION        129 

alrladv^'Trfn   ^h"!  '°f ''^•^*"^  ^'"'   ^«  has  been  said 
already,   be   found   to  derive  all  its  significance  from 

it  brw^^'^r*"']'  ?•  *°  ''''  "'^''^h  afe  contaLd  S 
are  as  tZ^l  /^P''^^*^'^"'     These  implied  propositions 

(1)  In  all  the  civilised  countries  of  the  modern  world 
a  few  men,  commonly  called  "  the  rich,"  over  and  above 
any  mcome  which  they  may  produce  by  their  own 
abihties  and  enterprise,  appropriate  a  secondary  income 
whatever  "°  '^  ^"^'"^^  ^^^^^  ^^^^  played\o  pTrt 
bv^" tJJnenS^K*  ^^'f  secondary  income  is  produced 
past  of  the  units  of  the  average  mass ;  and  as  soon  as 
will  ?' rTcov:r"y''  ^""  *'^  '"^^"^  of  productioTtV; 

tJ^}  ^*^!f  ^^<=°ndary  income,  regarded  as  a  "  share  of  the 
tota  produce,"  is  so  "enormous  "  that  the  "recovery  " 
of  It   by   "the  people  "is,   "according  to   a   growL 

tShout  thr'":5'''  '^'  '?i^  °^J^^«^«  «f  DercTacy 
tnroughout  the  modern  world,  and  will,  when  accom- 

phshed,  metamorphose  the  whole  charact;r  of  socialTiS 

The  core  of  these  propositions  is  obviously  contained 

n  the  last,  which  asserts  the  immense  magnitude  of  the 

share  "  awaiting  recovery,  and  the  extent  to  which 

the  people  must  have  hitherto  been  underpaid.     EVery- 

of  the  national  produce  goes  to  persons  who  are  mere 
possessors,"  for  otherwise  nothing  in  the  nature ^f  a 
leisured  class  could  exist.  The  practical  question  is  the 
quantitative  question  of  "  What  share  ?  "Neither  Mill 
nor  Mr.  Webb,  nor  any  of  the  thinkers  who  agree  w  th 
them,  assert,  as  Marx  did,  that  the  Many  produce  every- 
thing and  the  exceptional  Few  nothing,  or  that  any  man 
who  IS  rich  must  be  ipso  facto  a  thief.^  On  the  co/trTry" 
they  admit  that  "the  Rich,"  or  at  all  events  the  ac«ve 
section  of  them,  produce  or  earn  a  "share"  which 

"■^K-  17^^,,*^  *^^l'  numbers,  is  considerable-a  share 
which  Mill  describes  as  "  the  wages  of  the  employer? 
superintendence,"  which  Mr.  Webb  and  others  describe 
as  "the  rent  of  their  ability,"  and  which  American 
statisticians  and  economists  describe  as   "gains  from 


130     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

the  effort  of  the  entrepreneur."  The  essence  of  the 
democratic  contention  is  that,  whatever  the  amount  of 
this  earned  share  may  be,  the  few  Rich  in  any  case  get 
a  great  deal  more  than  their  earnings,  and  the  People 
get  a  great  deal  less;  and  the  practical  object  of  the 
exponents  of  the  democratic  idea  is  to  persuade  the 
People  that  the  "  share  "  of  which  they  are  thus  de- 
frauded is  something  so  vast  that  it  is  well  worth  their 
while  to  do  and  to  dare  everything  in  order  to  gain 
possession  of  it.  Since,  however,  as  we  have  seen,  it 
is  no  longer  possible  to  deny  in  serious  argument  the 
exceptional  productivity  of  the  Few,  and  their  conse- 
quent rights  to  an  exceptional  "  share  "  of  some  sort, 
the  doctrinaires  of  Democracy  have  betaken  themselves 
to  every  possible  device  by  which  the  exceptional  pro- 
ductivity of  the  Few,  though  it  cannot  be  denied,  may 
be  obscured,  as  being  a  fact  which,  if  too  clearly  recog- 
nised, would  lower  the  temperature  of  the  passions  to 
which  the  doctrinaires  make  appeal. 

Here,  then,  we  have  the  origin  of  those  ludicrous  or 
platitudinous  theories  which  aim  at  representing  the 
productivity  of  unequal  men  as  equal  on  the  ground 
that  all  of  them  are  creatures  of  a  common  biological 
process,  or  are  all  alike  parts  of  some  national  aggregate. 
These  are  theories  which,  as  applied  to  practical  life, 
are  so  absolutely  insane  and  futile,  except  for  the  one 
purpose  of  fomenting  popular  passion,  that  not  even  the 
most  rabid  of  democrats  would  dream  of  applying  them 
for  a  day  to  his  dealings  with  his  own  household,  in 
respect  even  of  such  trivial  matters  as  the  choice  of  a 
wife  or  cook,  or  the  bringing  up  of  his  children.  Indeed, 
as  we  shall  see  presently,  such  methods  of  argument  are 
now  being  rapidly  abandoned  by  the  doctrinaires  of 
democracy  themselves  for  others  which,  though  similar 
in  their  practical  purport,  are  deduced  intellectually  and 
morally  from  a  wholly  different  principle.  Meanwhile 
there  is  one  proposition  to  which,  in  some  form  or  other, 
they  adhere  with  unabated  tenacity.  This  is  the  pro- 
position, relating  not  to  principle  but  to  fact,  that  of 
"the  total  produce  "  or  income  of  every  modern  country 
the  share  appropriated  by  the  "Rich,"  over  and  above 
what  certain  of  them  may  earn  by  their  own  ability, 


ENGLISH   UNEARNED   INCOME     131 

is  of  such  a  magnitude  that  no  revolution  would  be  too 
hazardous  which  promised  the  mass  of  the  workers  even 
a  remote  prospect  of  "recovering  it." 

Now  this  proposition,  whatever  be  its  exact  sense, 
may  quite  imaginably  be  true.     It  is  impossible  to  say 
a  priori  tha,t  the  great  mass  of  the  producers  in  any  one 
country  or  in  all  are  not  defrauded  of  some  share  of  their 
products,  or  whether,  if  they  are  so  defrauded,  this  share 
deserves  the  name  "enormous  "  or  no.     We  can  reach 
a  conclusion  only  by  an  examination  of  concrete  facts; 
and  if  we  find  that,  under  such  conditions  as  are  now 
prevalent,  the  products  are,  as  a  fact,  systematically 
and  not  merely  by  accident,  mal-distributed  in  the  way 
described,  we  shall  have  to  consider  by  what  principles 
the  systematic  mal-distribution  is  determined,  and  in 
what  way  and  how  far  democratic  action  can  alter  them. 
But  the  broad  facts  of  the  case  are  what  we  must  deal 
with  first,  and  we  can  deal  with  them  only  as  embodied 
in  some  typical  instance  or  instances.     The  best  instance 
to  begin  with  will  be  naturally  that  of  the  country  in 
which  the  modern  industrial  system  has  been  on  trial 
for  the  longest  time,  and  of  which,  moreover,  the  statis- 
tical records  are  sufficiently  comprehensive  and  precise. 
It   has   been   commonly   admitted   by   sociaHsts   of   all 
nations  that  no  country  could  be  chosen  which  fulfils 
these  conditions  more  signally  than  the  United  Kingdom. 
Let  us  take,  then,  the  case  of  the  United  Kingdom  as 
(to  speak  roughly)  it  was  about  the  year  1907,  this  year 
being  the  central  year  of  a  quinquennium  with  regard 
to   which   statistics   are   available   of  an   exceptionally 
ample  kind. 

Two  methods  of  investigation,  each  independent  of 
the  other, ^  united  to  show  that  the  net  income  of  the 

^  Prior  to  the  year  1907  the  national  income  was  computed,  firstly 
on  the  hasis  of  wage-rates  recorded  as  current  amongst  various  classes 
of  workers,  and  the  number  of  workers  comprehended  in  each  class ; 
and  secondly  on  the  basis  of  the  records  relating  to  income-tax,  which 
deal  mainly,  though  not  entirely,  with  incomes  exceeding  £160  a  year. 
About  the  year  1905  statisticians  had  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
then  income  of  the  United  Kingdom  was  somewhat  in  excess  of  2000 
million  pounds.  In  the  year  1907  a  noveJ  inquiry  was  instituted— that 
is  to  say,  a  "Census  of  Production"— which  took  no  cognisance  of 
individual  incomes  at  all,  but  dealt  only  with  the  net  selling  value  of 


. 


132     LIMITS  OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

United  Kingdom  in  the  year  1907  amounted  approxi- 
mately to  2100  million  pounds,  of  which  it  is  ascertain- 
able from  the  records  relating  to  income-tax  that  790 
(or,  let  us  say  800)  million  was  made  up  of  net  incomes 
in  excess  of  £160,  whilst  1300  million  was  the  sum  of 
incomes  below  that  figure. 

Now  all  the  individual  receipts  which  made  up  this 
grand  total  were  derived  by  the  recipients  either  from 
the  mere  possession  of  property,  or  from  personal  effort 
of  some  kind,  or  in  part  from  one  of  these  ^ources  and 
in  part,  also,  from  the  other.  Let  us  deal  with  the  total 
derived  from  personal  effort-or,  as  it  is  commonly 
called.  "  earned  income  " — first.  . 

The  kinds  of  effort  by  which,  in  a  modern  society, 
incomes  are  earned  may  be  broadly  reduced  to  five. 

Firstly,  the  effort  of  manual  workers,  most  of  whom 

work  for  wages.'  .  ,  ,      , 

Secondly,  the  effort  of  mental  workers,  such  as  school- 
teachers, government  functionaries,  and  business  clerks 
or   managers,   who   work   for   wages   commonly   called 

^^ThTrdly,  the  effort  of  independent  professional  men 
who,  as  to  the  details  of  their  work,  are  practically  their 

own  masters.  ,,  ,  „,v.« 

Fourthly,  the  effort  of  the  very  small  employers  who 

not  only  direct  their  employees  (very  few  in  number), 

but  also  share  their  work. 

Fifthlv,  the  effort  of  the  larger  employers,  who  alone 

are  typical  of  the  modern  industrial  system,  and  whose 

sole   connection  with  their  employees  consists   in  the 

task,  purely  mental,  of  directing  them. 

iLt  us  begin  with  the  income  derived  from  ordinary 

manlrand^from  salaried  mental  effort.     This  may  be 

?TS  "Xh'e"  vat:    v^ldeTaCt   2100'  'miUio!^  pounds  as  the 

*but  nf mally^^^^^^^^^^^  >^oldings  with  the  aid  of  their  own  famdies. 

The  class  comprises  domestic  servants  also. 


ENGLISH   EARNED   INCOME        133 


taken  as  comprising  the  aggregate  —  namely,  1300 
million  pounds — of  incomes  not  exceeding  £160  a  year, 
to  which  must  be  added  about  150  million,  ear-marked 
and  analysed  by  the  Commissioners  of  Inland  Revenue, 
as  the  salaries  of  those  mental  workers  whose  total 
incomes  range  from  £160  upwards.  Thus  wages,  in  the 
wider  sense  of  the  word,  amounted  in  all  to  about  1450 
million  pounds,  or  70  per  cent,  of  the  entire  produce  of 
the  nation.  To  this  sum  must  be  added  the  earnings 
of  professional  men,  and  those  of  the  smaller  employers. 
The  aggregate  of  professional  earnings  was,  according 
to  a  common  estimate,  something  like  60  million,  and 
the  net  gains  of  the  partners  in  the  smaller  business 
firms — gains  which  averaged  less  than  £300  per  partner — 
were  in  the  aggregate  something  like  50  million.  It  is 
impossible  to  distinguish  between  these  two  categories 
with  exactitude,  but  together  they  made  up  a  total  of 
about  110  million ;  and  if  this  sum  be  added  to  wages 
and  salaries,  we  have  an  income  identifiable  as  earned 
which  did  not  amount  to  less  than  1560  million,^  or 
75  per  cent,  of  what  is  described  by  Mill  as  "the  total 
produce  "  of  the  nation. 

To  this  sum  must  be  added  the  profits  of  the  larger 
businesses,  in  so  far  as  these  are  the  result  of  the  active 
ability  of  the  principal  and  controlling  partners,  and  are 
not  mere  interest  on  capital  as  held  by  the  outside 
public.  Such  businesses  are  here  taken  as  including  all 
whose  gross  profits  exceeded  £1000.  Nearly  all  of  them 
were  constituted   in  the  form  of  firms  or  companies. 

*  Tho.se  who  desire  to  work  out  these  figures  for  themselves  should 
consult  the  analytical  reports  of  the  Commissioners  of  Inland  Revenue 
for  the  years  1905-10,  especially  the  Synopses  of  Incomes,  Schedules  D 
and  E.  It  should  be  noted  that  what  are  called  "  the  gross  amounts 
reviewed "  include  about  200  million  pounds  which  form  no  part  of 
net  incomes  exceeding  £160,  but  are  made  up  of  outgoings  and 
small  incomes  not  subject  to  tax.  In  the  case  of  business  incomes 
(Schedule  D)  these  deductions  must  be  carefully  distributed ,  as  some  of 
them  (e.  ff.  allowances  for  wear  and  tear  of  machinery)  are  applicable 
only  to  businesses  of  a  certain  kind.  The  60  million  pounds,  given  in 
the  text  as  the  estimated  earnings  of  some  200,000  professional  men, 
are  taken  as  being  included  in  incomes  classified  as  being  earned  by 
'*  Persons,"  the  purely  business  profits  being  mainly,  though  not 
wholly,  comprised  in  profits  recorded  as  those  of  "  Private  Firms " 
and  ** Companies." 


134     LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

Their  aggregate  profits  at  the  period  here  in  question 
amounted,  in  round  figures,  to  300  miUion  pounds ;  and 
of  this  sum,  as  will  be  shown  in  detail  presently,  about 
half  was  interest  on  capital,  and  the  other  half,  or  150 
million,  was  the  product  directly  resultmg  from  the 
ability  of  the  controlling  partners.  Thus,  to  the  mcome 
already  specified  as  earned,  this  further  sum  of  150 
million  must  be  added,  the  total  earned  by  direct  and 
daily  renewed  effort  being  thereby  raised  to  1710,  or 
(in  round  figures)  to  1700  million  pounds  out  of  an  entire 
national  income  of  2100  million. 

Of  the  remaining  400  million'  (so  we  may  roughly 
call  it,  although  in  reality  it  was  less)  which  was  proxi- 
mately derived  by  its  recipients  from  the  mere  possession 
of  property,  about  240  million  consisted  of  the  rents  of 
buildings,  building  sites,  agricultural  land  with  its  im- 
provements, and  interest  on  certain  stocks,  mainly 
foreign,  which  was  paid  by  governments,  or  agents 
acting  on  their  behalf,  whilst  the  residue— about  150 
million,  as  has  just  now  been  said— represented  the 
interest  on  shares  held  by  the  general  public  in  the  larger 
businesses  of  the  kingdom. 

The  nature,  the  composition  and  the  magnitude  of  this 
proximately  unearned  income  have,  however,  been  the 
subject  of  so  many  popular  misconceptions  that  the 
figures  here  given,  and  their  significance,  must  be 
examined  in  greater  detail. 

Of  these  misconceptions  the  most  obvious  and  familiar 
is  the  following,  which  largely  accounts  for  the  over- 
estimates often  made  of  the  magnitude  of  the  unearned 
total.  It  relates  to  the  notorious  fact  that  business 
enterprises  for  the  most  part  are,  under  modern  con- 
ditions, organised  in  the  form  of  companies,  and  largely 
worked  with  capital  provided  by  mere  investors.  Now, 
the  doctrine  which  is  popular  on  democratic  platforms 
to-day  is  that,  when  businesses  were  mostly  small,  and 
the  capital  was  owned  by  the  person,  or  two  or  three 

1  The  above  total  of  nearly  400  million  of  income  from  possession 
is  exclusive  of  about  50  million  ear-markerl  in  the  official  returns  as 
ffoinff  to  persons  whose  total  incomes  do  not  exceed  £160.  This  sum 
leino^  distributed  already  amongst  "the  workers,"  it  cannot  form  part 
of  any  sum  which  democracy  can  aim  at  "  recovering  "  from  them. 


EARNED   INCOME   OF   COMPANIES     135 

persons  who  administered  it,  the  profits  might  be  fairly 
attributed  to  the  efforts  of  such  persons  themselves ;  but 
that  ever  since  the  rise  of  the  modern  company  system 
the  whole  situation  has  in  this  respect  been  changed.     In 
the  case  of  any  large  company — so  the  argument  runs — 
the  employer  who  controls  the  business  in  his  capacity 
of  predominant   partner   is   altogether  eliminated;   his 
services  are  relegated  to  a  manager  whose  salary  figures 
in  the  wage-bill,  and  the  total  profits  are  interest  pure 
and  simple,  going  to  a  body  of  shareholders  who  know 
nothing  about  the  business  whatsoever,   except  in  so 
far  as  it  yields  them  a  larger  or  smaller  dividend.    Should 
this  argument  be  correct,  the  proximately  unearned  total 
would   be   raised   from   400   million   to   550.     Now,    as 
applied  to  certain  companies,  of  which  railways  are  the 
chief  example,   it  is  doubtless  correct  enough;  but  if 
applied  to  companies  generally  it  is  nothing  better  than 
nonsense.     Can  any  one  suppose  that  all  the  novel  in- 
ventions and  conveniences  which  have  been  placed  at 
the  disposal  of  mankind  by  the  enterprise  of  naodern 
companies  have  been  simply  due  to  the  entrusting  by 
idle  and  inexpert  persons  of  so  much  money  to  the  hands 
of  wage-paid  managers,  who  forthwith  proceed  to  use 
it  in  any  manner  they  please?     If  things  stood  really 
thus,  the  growth  of  wealth  would  be  a  charmingly  simple 
process.     Any  section  of  the  investing  public,  having 
deposited  its  sovereigns  in  a  bank,  would  merely  have 
to  issue  an  advertisement  to  some  such  effect  as  this : 
"A  Company  having  been  formed  with  a  capital  of  a 
million  pounds  for  the  production  of  something  new, 
useful  and  marvellous,  a  Manager  is  wanted  to  settle 
what  this  something  shall  be,  and  to  supervise  its  pro- 
duction.    Salary    £5000   a   year.     As   the   shareholders 
know  nothing  about  any  kind  of  business  themselves, 
and  are  quite  incapable  of  judging  between  man  and 
man,  the  first  applicant  will  be  accepted." 

Such  an  idea  is  ludicrous.  Nevertheless,  the  fact 
remains  that  the  growth  of  the  company  system  has 
given  rise  to  a  question  which  is  really  of  extreme  im- 
portance, and  is  practically  novel  on  account  of  its  novel 
magnitude.  This  is  the  question  of  what,  in  the  profits 
of  the  larger  companies,  is  the  average  proportion  borne 


136     LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 

by  interest  on  mere  investment  to  the  earning  or  pro- 
ducts of  the  ability  of  the  active  and  controlhng  partners. 
An  answer  to  this  question  was  attempted  by  the  German 
economist  Wagon,  which  was  based  on  the  business 
records  of  a  number  of  selected  companies,  so  far  as 
these  records  were  accessible  to  the  inquiry  of  a  private 
person.  He  found,  as  might  be  expected,  that  the  ratio 
of  the  product  of  the  activity  of  the  controlling  partners 
to  what  he  described  as  "company  gain,"  or  interest, 
varied  greatly  in  different  cases,  and  he  does  not  appear 
to  have  arrived  at  any  general  average.  Evidence, 
however,  of  a  very  much  ampler  kind — namely,  that 
provided  by  the  official  statistics  of  America — was 
tabulated  in  the  year  1914  by  Dr.  W.  S.  King,  Professor 
of  Statistics  in  the  University  of  Wisconsin.  In  Dr. 
King's  tables  the  gains  of  all  businesses  are  divided 
into  three  portions,  described  respectively  as  Rent,  or 
"the  value-product  attributable  to  sites  and  buildings  " ; 
"  Interest,  or  the  value-product  attributable  to  plant  or 
mechanical  equipment";  and  "Profits,"  which  term 
is  defined  as  "  the  value-product  attributable  to  the 
efforts  of  entrepreneurs."  Thus,  "Rent"  and  "In- 
terest "  together  correspond  to  what  Wagon  calls  "  Com- 
pany gains,"  or  income  from  mere  possession;  whilst 
"  Profits  "  are  the  product  of  the  ability  of  the  active 
and  controlling  employers,  or  (to  use  Mill's  language) 
"the  wages  of  the  employers'  superintendence."  Such 
being  the  case,  the  total  gains  of  all  the  industrial  and 
commercial  undertakings  in  the  United  States,  in  the 
year  1910,  were,  according  to  these  fables,  about  1900 
million  pounds,  of  which  850  million  consisted  of  rent 
and  interest,  and  1050  million  consisted  of  the  product 
of  "  the  efforts  of  the  entrepreneurs."  In  the  year  1900, 
though  the  figures  were  much  lower,  the  proportion  was 
substantially  the  same.  It  would  thus  seem,  from  the 
results  of  a  scientific  analysis  of  the  greatest  mass  of 
contemporary  data  in  the  world,  that  of  the  total  gains 
of  businesses,  industrial  and  commercial  of  to-day,  the 
collective  product  ^  of  the  efforts  of  the  active  employers 

^  How  p^reatly  the  proportions  which  yielrl  this  g-eneral  averaf^e  vary 
in  particular  cases  may  be  seen  from  the  following  examples.  The  pro- 
portion of  the  total  gain  attributable  to  the  "  efforts  of  the  entrepre- 


MEANING   OF  EARNED   INCOME     137 

is  about  55  per  cent.,  and  those  of  the  investing  public 
45  per  cent. 

We  shall,  therefore,  probably  be  under  the  mark  rather 
than  over  it  if  we  assume,  as  we  have  done  here,  that, 
in  the  United  Kingdom  at  the  period  here  in  question, 
of  the  total  net  gains  of  the  larger  firms  and  companies — 
that  is  to  say,  300  million  pounds — as  much  as  half  was 
the  product  of  the  efforts  of  the  employers,  and  that  not 
more  than  a  half  went  as  interest  to  the  mere  investor. 

But  it  is  not  only  in  respect  of  the  profits  of  Companies 
that  popular  thought  as  to  unearned  income  errs. 
Another  error  is  prevalent  which  relates  to  the  con- 
ception of  unearned  income  generally.  It  is  no  doubt 
true,  as  popular  thought  assumes,  that  all  income  not 
earned  or  produced  by  direct  effort  is  necessarily  income 
from  possession;  but  all  income  from  possession  is  not 
necessarily  unearned.  There  are  many  kinds  of  effort, 
such  as  efforts  devoted  to  the  perfecting  of  some  great 
invention,  which,  until  they  are  ended,  produce  prac- 
tically nothing.  Not  till  an  invention  is  so  complete 
in  design  that  it  is  fit  to  be  multiplied  by  manufacture 
and  put  into  general  use  does  it  come  into  being  as  a 
something  which  adds  to  the  world's  wealth,  or  can 
bring  to  the  inventor  any  reward  whatever.  When  it  is 
completed,  he  sells  the  right  of  producing  it,  we  may 
so  suppose,  to  a  company,  which  pays  him  in  shares  to 
the  value  (let  us  say)  of  £30,000,  and  he  thenceforth 
enjoys  an  income  of  £1500  a  year  without  the  necessity 
on  his  part  for  any  further  effort  of  any  kind.  Such 
income  would  take  the  form  of  income  from  mere  pos- 
session ;  but  anybody  who  maintained  that  it  was  not 
truly  earned  could  do  so  only  by  committing  himself  to 
the  impossible  principle  that  no  effort,  however  long  and 
laborious,  which  results  in  the  production  of  any  per- 
manent utility,  can  possibly  produce,  or  possibly  earn, 
anything. 

neur  "  was,  in  the  case  of  Railways,  10  per  cent. ;  of  Mines,  12  per  cent. ; 
of  Electric  Power  and  Light,  .38  per  cent.  ;  of  Manufactures,  54  per 
cent.  ;  of  Commerce,  00  per  cent. ;  and  of  Transportation  hy  Water,  69 
per  cent,  llie  small  percentage  representing  **rent  and  interest"  in 
this  last  case  would  appear  to  be  due  to  the  fact  that  no  rent  is  payable 
for  the  permanent  way— namely  the  sea. 


■!«!■»«!.'■!'■!■ 


188     LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

The  same  argument  applies  to  the  rent  of  buildings. 
Brown  and  Jones  are,  let  us  say,  two  clerks,  each  of  them 
earning  a  salary  of  £400  a  year,  out  of  which,  by  living 
with  care,  each  of  them  could  save  £300.  Brown,  how- 
ever, spends  his  surplus  in  getting  men  and  women  to 
dance,  sing  and  dress  up  for  his  pleasure  at  music-halls. 
Jones  pays  it  to  builders  who  year  by  year  in  return  for 
it  build  him  a  model  dwelling  fit  for  a  workman's  family. 
At  the  end  of  ten  years  a  row  of  such  dwellings  is  owned 
by  him,  for  which  he  receives  a  rental  of  £150.  His  total 
income  is  now  £550,  whereas  that  of  Brown  is  still  £400 
only.  The  extra  income  of  the  house-owner  would  be 
commonly  called  unearned,  its  immediate  origin  being 
possession,  and  not,  like  that  of  his  salary,  the  perform- 
ance of  daily  duties.  But,  as  any  one  can  see,  who 
takes  the  trouble  to  think,  it  is  just  as  truly  earned — as 
truly  the  result  of  work — as  the  annual  salary  itself  out 
of  which  the  houses  were  created.  If  the  salary  is  the 
equivalent  of  effort,  the  houses  are  the  equivalent  of  the 
saved  portion  of  his  salary.  They  are  so  much  salary 
converted  into  a  permanent  instead  of  a  perishable 
form,  and  endowed  with  a  lasting  utility  which  recoins 
itself  in  an  annual  rent.  This  rent,  indeed,  is  not  only 
earned  but  is  super-earned ;  for  the  salary  out  of  which 
the  houses  were  created  represented  the  product  of 
technical  efforts  only,  but  the  rent  is  the  product  of  these 
efforts  with  foresight  and  will  added  to  them.  If,  how- 
ever, Jones  when  dying  should  bequeath  his  houses  to 
his  companion,  the  rental,  as  received  by  Brown,  would 
immediately  change  its  character.  Instead  of  being 
earned,  it  would  be  unearned,  for  its  new  recipient  would 
have  played  no  part  in  creating  it. 

Here  we  see  what  the  really  essential  difference  be- 
tween earned  income  and  unearned  income  is.  Earned 
income  is  income  which,  whether  its  proximate  source 
be  the  possession  of  property  or  no,  has  its  ultimate 
origin  in  efforts  made  by  the  recipient  himself  at  some 
time  of  his  life,  be  that  time  what  it  may.^     Unearned 

1  The  practical  bearings  of  this  fact  is  illustrated  by  an  article  on 
''Income-tax  Hardship"  in  a  popular  London  Journal  (Sept.  1914). 
''  The  hardship,"  it  says,  *'  of  the  present  system  is  illustrated  by  the 
case  of  a  retired  professional  man,  who  for  the  forty  years  of  his  work- 


MEANING  OF  EARNED  INCOME     18d 

income  is  income  which,  coming  as  it  always  must  do 
from  permanent  property  of  some  kind,  comes  from 
property  created  by  the  efforts  of  persons  other  than  the 
present  recipients  themselves.  That  is  to  say,  apart 
from  gifts  of  property  inter  vivos  or  of  property  acquired 
by  marriage  or  some  form  of  gambling,  all  income  from 
property  is  earned  which  comes  from  property  produced 
by  the  efforts  of  the  living.  The  only  kind  of  income 
which  can  properly  be  called  unearned  is  income  from 
such  property  as  has  been  created  by  the  efforts  of  the 
dead.  In  other  words,  again,  at  any  given  period  m  the 
case  of  any  given  country,  all  income  from  property  is 
earned  which  is  due  to  the  efforts  of  the  generation  at 
that  time  alive. 

Hence,  the  active  lifetime  of  a  generation  being  not 
less  than  thirty  years,  the  earned  income  with  which  we 
are  here  concerned  will  be  income  from  such  property 
as  had  been  created  in  the  United  Kingdom  during  the 
thirty  years  preceding  the  year  1907.  Now,  this  new 
property,  consisting  for  the  most  part  of  houses  and 
shares  in  companies,  amounted  in  the  year  1907  to  at 
least  one-half  of  the  total  which  we  are  able  to  identify 
as  yielding  rent  or  interest.  If,  then,  the  total  income 
originating  proximately  in  "possession"  was  at  that 
time,  as  we  have  seen,  nearly  400  million,  nearly  200 
million  will  have  been  earned  by  the  efforts  of  the 
persons  at  that  time  receiving  it,  and  nearly  200  million 
will  have  been  unearned,  or  inherited  by  the  living  from 

the  dead.  . 

The  income  of  the  United  Kingdom,  m  short,  at  the 
beginning  of  the  twentieth  century,  in  respect  of  its 
sources  as  they  actually  were  on  the  one  hand,  and  were 
popularly  supposed  to  be  on  the  other,  is  comparable 
to  the  income  of  a  doctor,  which  was  known  by  all  his 
neighbours  to  be  slightly  in  excess  of  £2000  a  year ;  the 
prevalent  opinion  being  that  he  barely  made  £400  by 
his  practice,  and  that  £1700  was  from  property  left  to 

inff  life  denied  himself  every  luxury  on  principle,  in  order  to  provide 
for  his  children  and  the  old  asre  of  his  wife  and  himself.  Yet  the 
interest  on  the  savings  of  these  laborious  years  is  treated  as  unearned. 
Attention  should  be  paid  to  the  difference  between  income  inherited 
and  that  derived  from  savings." 


140     LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 

him  by  his  father,  whereas  in  reality  £1700  was  from  his 
practice,  about  £200  from  property  left  to  him  by  his 
father  in  the  year  1877,  and  another  £200  from  property 
saved  and  created  out  of  his  own  fees  in  the  course  of 
some  thirty  years  of  active  professional  life.  In  other 
words,  the  "  enormous  "  unearned  "  share,"  which  has 
haunted  the  imagination  of  men  like  Mr.  Webb  and  Mill, 
was  not  in  reality  so  much  as  one-tenth  of  the  total, 
being  equal  at  the  time  in  question  to  threepence  a  day 
per  inhabitant  of  the  United  Kingdom. 

In  the  foregoing  illustration,  however,  one  point  is 
ignored,  and  still  remains  to  be  considered,  with  regard 
to  which  an  error  prevails,  even  more  absurd  than  those 
which  have  just  been  noted.     By  most  agitators  it  is 
assumed  that  unearned  income,  whatever  its  amount 
may  be,  is  distributed  wholly  amongst  persons  who  earn 
or  produce  nothing.     Thus  a  Socialist  Society,  of  which 
Mr.  Webb  is  a  leading  member,  issued  in  the  year  1905 
a  pamphlet,  the  writer  of  which  having  established  to 
his  own  satisfaction  that  the  unearned  income  of  the 
United  Kingdom  amounted  to  no  less  than  700  million 
pounds,  immediately  proceeded  to  observe  that  here  we 
have  obviously  the  income  of  the  body  called  "  the  Idle 
Rich,"  which  body  consisted,  according  to  him,  of  some 
700,000  adult  males,  "  not  one  of  whom  had  ever  even 
professed  to  have  so  much  as  the  shadow  of  an  occupa- 
tion in  the  whole  course  of  his  life."     If  this  were  true 
some  singular  results  would  follow.     Nobody  who  had 
inherited  a  couple  of  hundreds  a  year  could  ever  in  his 
life  have  done  so  much  as  a  stroke  of  useful  work. 
Nobody  who  had  ever  done  a  stroke  of  useful  work  could 
possibly  be  the  son  of  a  parent  who  had  not  by  the  time 
of  his  death  spent  everything  he  had  ever  possessed. 
The  fact  is,  as  everybody  in  his  senses  knows,  countless 
men  are  in  receipt  of  inherited  incomes  which  are  nothing 
more  than  additions  to  incomes  earned  by  work.     How 
these   additions   are   distributed   there  is  no  statistical 
evidence  of  a  direct  kind  to  show.     But,  though  we 
cannot  say  how,  in  detail,  the  inherited  "  share  "  was 
distributed,  there  are,  with  regard  to  the  effects  of  its 
distribution  on  total  incomes,  evidences,  some  of  them 
direct,  some  of  them  indirect,  but  generally  accepted  as 


IIW 


INCOMES   ABOVE  £3000 


141 


valid,   which  indicate  the  facts  of  the  matter  clearly 
enough  in  outline.     We  have  indirect  evidence  as  to 
certain  total  incomes  in  the  number  of  houses  of  certain 
rental  values.     We  have  other  evidences  of  a  kind  more 
or  less  direct  as  to  total  incomes  up  to  £500  a  year.     In 
particular   we    have   evidences,    absolutely    direct    and 
unambiguous,  as  to  incomes  ranging  from   £3000  up- 
wards.^    These   taken   by   themselves   would   be   quite 
sufficient  to  show  how  wildly  absurd  is  the  doctrine  of 
"  the   enormous   unearned   share "   withheld   from   the 
masses  by  a  fabulously  rich  minority,  or,  as  a  radical 
sentimentalist    has    described    them,    by    "  the    super- 
wealthy  with  their  piled-up  aggregations."     The  income 
of  any  typical  modern  country — England  or  the  United 
Kingdom  being  taken  as  the  classical  example — has  been 
depicted   by   socialists   and   others,   from   the   days   of 
Marx  onwards,  as  an  image  with  a  head  of  gold,  which 
head,  representing  the  unearned  "  share,"  is  swollen  to 
such  vast  proportions  that  the  atrophied  limbs  and  body 
can  scarcely  sustain  its  weight.     Thus,  a  member  of  the 
English  Labour  Party,  addressing  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, declared  that  nearly  all  the  wealth  which  had 
been  created  in  England  since  the  beginning  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  had  gone  to  a  few  persons  who  were 
"  enormously  rich  already."    The  founders  of  an  English 
labour-league  had  issued  a  Manifesto  about  twenty  years 
before,  according  to  the  figures  given  in  which,  if  the 
unearned  income  of  the  rich  had  at  that  time  weighed 
a  pound,  the  income  of  the  rest  of  the  nation  would 
hardly    have    weighed    more    than    three    and    a    half 
ounces.      As   a   matter   of   fact,    in   the   year   1907,    if 
everybody    is    taken    as    one    of    the    fabulously    rich 
whose    income    amounts    to    as    much    as    £5000,    the 
income  of  the  rich  was  to  that  of  the  rest  of  the  nation, 
not  in  the  proportion  of  a  pound  to  three  and  a  half 
ounces,   but  was  barely  as  much  as  one   ounce  to   a 
pound. 

But  before  we  attempt  to  draw  any  further  moral  from 

1  These  figures  as  to  incomes  exceeding  £3000  a  year  were  not  avail- 
able for  tlie  year  1907 ;  but  their  then  amount  can  be  approximately 
reached  by  reference  to  the  general  increases  of  income  which  have 
taken  place  since  then. 


142     LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

this  Darticular  fact,  or  from  the  others  which  have  just 
been  rndcated,  the  whole  of  the  figures  just  given  with 
rel^rd  to  England  or  the  United  Kingdom  shall  be  con- 
XedTn  con'nection  with  others  which,  be-des  helping 
to  confirm  them,  will  mvest  them  with  a  fresh 
significance. 


CHAPTER   II 

COMPARATIVE   DISTRIBUTION 

If  the  figures  just  given  were  figures  standing  by  them- 
selves, they  might  be  open  to  two  criticisms  which 
would,  if  true,  detract  indefinitely  from  their  import- 
ance. In  the  first  place,  since  they  are  partly  based  on 
methods  of  indirect  computation  which  cannot  claim  to 
be  exact,  they  cannot,  it  might  be  said,  be  taken  as  the 
basis  of  any  definite  argument.  In  the  second  place  it 
might  be  said  that,  relating,  as  they  do,  to  the  affairs 
of  one  country  only,  the  facts  which  they  indicate,  even 
if  indicated  correctly,  are  largely  local  and  accidental, 
and  are  for  that  reason  deficient  in  any  general  meaning. 
If  these  figures  stood  by  themselves,  such  criticism  would 
be  plausible.  The  actual  state  of  the  case  is,  however, 
widely  different. 

The  general  ideas  with  regard  to  the  modern  distribu- 
tion of  income  which  underlie  the  arguments  of  most 
social  revolutionaries  have  been  mainly  derived  from 
theorists  who  either  neglected,   as  Henry  George  did, 
statistical  methods  altogether,  or  who  flourished  when 
these  methods  were  at  a  stage  much  less  advanced  than 
that  which  they  have  reached  since  the  time  of  Henry 
George's  death.     It  is  true  that,  so  far  as  the  distribution 
of  incomes  is  concerned,  much  remains  to  be  done  in  the 
way  of  collecting  information — a  kind  of  work  which 
must  mainly  be  performed  by  governments;  but  this 
work  has  in  many  countries  been  now  advanced  suf- 
ficiently   to    render   the    employment    possible    of   the 
method  of  international  comparison.     Such  is  the  case 
especially  with  regard  to  the  four  great  countries  in 
which  wealth-production  has  increased  to  the  most  con- 
spicuous extent — namely,  the  United  Kingdom,  France, 
Prussia  and  America.     In  each  of  these  countries  statis- 

143 


144     LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 


ticians,  using  independent  methods,  have  been  en- 
deavouring to  ascertain  with  as  much  correctness  as 
possible  what  the  distribution  of  incomes  in  that  par- 
ticular country  is.  In  each  case  large  use  has  been  made 
of  the  method  of  estimates,  yet  when  the  general  results 
of  these  various  computations  are  compared,  the  main 
features  of  distribution  in  any  one  of  these  countries  are 
found  to  be  almost  identical  with  its  features  in  all  the 
rest.  If  each  of  these  several  results  is  expressed  by  a 
curved  line,  and  the  four  lines  are  exhibited  in  a  single 
diagram,  the  tendency  of  each  is  to  approach  and  often 
to  overlap  the  others. 

The  most  elaborate  example  of  this  kind  of  coincidence 
is  that  provided  by  a  comparison  between  the  United 
Kingdom  and  America,  for  which  a  mass  of  material 
will  be  found  in  a  volume  by  Dr.  W.  I.  King,  already 
referred  to,  on  The  Wealth  and  Income  of  the  People 
of  the  United  States.  It  was  published  in  the  year  1913, 
and  relates  to  the  year  1910.  Let  us  begin  then  with 
re-examining  the  case  of  the  United  Kingdom  in  the 
light  of  the  evidences  already  used  or  mentioned — 
namely,  the  known  total  income  of  the  country  about 
the  year  1907,  as  shown  by  the  Census  of  Production, 
the  Income-tax  Returns  for  the  same  period,  and  the 
numbers  of  houses  of  various  rental  values;  and  let  us 
summarise  the  results  as  either  directly  shown  by,  or 
inferable  from,  them,  not  with  regard  to  the  various 
sources  of  income,  but  with  regard  to  the  distribution 
of  incomes  taken  as  so  many  wholes.  And  let  us  first, 
for  purposes  of  a  rough  and  preliminary  comparison, 
divide  these  incomes  into  the  five  following  groups,  show- 
ing what  percentage  of  the  total  is  formed  by  the 
inferable  or  the  known  aggregate  of  each. 

The  First  Group  shall  consist  of  incomes  of  £5000  and 
upwards. 

The  Second,  of  incomes  ranging  from  £3000  to  £5000. 

The  Third,  of  incomes  ranging  from  £1000  to  £3000. 

The  Fourth,  of  incomes  ranging  from  £500  to  £1000. 

The  Fifth,  of  incomes  not  exceeding  £500. 

The  total  income  of  the  United  Kingdom  having  been 
at  the  time  2100  million,  it  appears  from  the  various 
evidences  which  have  just  now  been  mentioned  that  the 


ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 


145 


incomes  comprised  in  the  First  Group  formed  6  per  cent, 
of  the  total ;  those  in  the  Second,  2  per  cent. ;  '  those  in 
the  Third,  8  per  cent. ;  those  in  the  Fourth,  10  per  cent. ; 
and  those  in  the  Fifth,  75  per  cent. 

Let  us  now  turn  to  Dr.  King's  Tables  for  America, 
in  which,  with  extraordinary  elaboration,  American 
incomes  are  grouped  in  a  like  way,  the  aggregate  in  each 
case  being  reduced  to  a  fraction  of  the  entire  income  of 
the  country.  Decimals  being  omitted.  Dr.  King's  figures 
for  America,  as  against  those  just  given  for  the  United 
Kingdom,  are  as  follows. 

The  aggregate  of  incomes  comprised  in  the  First  Group 
— namely,  those  exceeding  £5000  a  year — is  given  by 
Dr.  King  as  8  per  cent.,  the  corresponding  figure  of  the 
United  Kingdom  being  6. 

The  aggregate  of  incomes  in  the  Second  Group — 
namely,  those  lying  between  £3000  and  £5000— is  given 
by  him  as  2  per  cent.,  the  corresponding  figure  for  the 
United  Kingdom  being  the  same. 

The  aggregate  of  incomes  in  the  Third  Group — namely, 
those  lying  between  £1000  and  £3000— is  given  by  him 
as  6  per  cent.,  the  corresponding  figure  for  the  United 
Kingdom  being  8. 

The  aggregate  of  incomes  in  the  Fourth  Group — 
namely,  those  lying  between  £500  and  £1000— is  given 
by  him  as  9  per  cent.,  the  corresponding  figure  for  the 
United  Kingdom  being  10. 

The  aggregate  of  incomes  in  the  Fifth  Group — namely, 
all  those  that  do  not  exceed  £500 — is  given  by  him  as 
75  per  cent.,  the  corresponding  figure  for  the  United 
Kingdom  being  74. 

If  we  take  the  first  two  groups  together — namely, 
those  comprising  all  incomes  in  excess  of  £3000 — and 
examine  them  more  minutely,  we  shall,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  one  notable  detail,  discover  other  parallelisms  no 
less  remarkable  than  these.  The  exception  relates  to 
the  largest  incomes  of  all.  If  we  take  the  hundred  and 
fifty  richest  men  in  America,  and  compare  them  with 
the  seventy-five  richest  men  in  the  United  Kingdom  (the 

^  The  percentages  for  Groups  1  and  2  are  based  on  the  super-tax 
returns,  made  subsequently  to  the  year  1907,  and  giving  the  actual 
numbers  and  total  increase  of  the  persons  concerned. 


1 1 


146    LIMITS    OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

two  numbers  being  the  same  relatively  to  the  different 
populations),  it  appears  that  this  group  m  America  had 
an  aggregate  income  of  75  million  pounds,  or  an  average 
income  of  half  a  million  per  person,  whilst  its  counter- 
part in  the  United  Kingdom  had  an  aggregate  income 
of  13  million  only,  the  average  income  per  person  being 
roughly  170  thousand.  Otherwise,  the  grouping  of  in- 
comes in  excess  of  £3000  exhibits  in  the  two  cases  what 
is  not  so  much  a  likeness  as  an  identity. 

Thus,  if,  to  vary  our  method  of  classihcation,  we 
take,  not  the  total  amount,  but  the  total  number  of 
incomes  exceeding  £3000,  the  number  of  those  ranging 
from  £3000  to  £5000  will  in  both  countries  be  nearly  half 
of  the  whole ;  the  number  of  those  ranging  from  £5000 
to  £10,000  will  in  both  countries  be  nearly  one-third; 
the  number  of  those  ranging  from  £10,000  to  £20,000 
will  in  both  countries  be  a  little  more  or  a  little  less 
than  a  seventh;  and  the  number  of  those  exceedmg 
£20,000  will  in  both  cases  be  one-hundredth. 

The  close  similarity  between  the  two  countries  which 
is  shown  by  figures  such  as  these— figures  worked  out 
by  absolutely  independent  inquirers,  dealing  with  abso- 
lutely different  and  differently  presented  data— forms  a 
strong  confirmation  of  the  substantial,  though  it  would 
be  rash  to  say  of  the  exact,  accuracy  of  each.     It  may, 
at  any  rate,  be  taken  as  refuting,  beyond  the  possibility 
of  doubt,  the  fundamental  assumption  of  all  socialist 
reformers  that  some  "enormous  share"  of  the  wealth 
of  the  modern  world  passes,  in  virtue  of  the  accident  of 
mere  "  possession  "  or  otherwise,  into  the  hands  of  the 
conspicuously  rich.     It  may  be  taken  as  showing  that 
even  the  rich  and  the  moderately  rich  between  them 
manage  to  secure  no  more  than  a  relatively  small  fraction 

^  But  the  significance  of  this  similarity  does  not  end 
here.  The  fact  that  out  of  the  productive  activity  of 
each  of  these  two  populations  a  scheme  of  distribution 
arises  which  is  in  its  main  features  nearly,  if  not  abso- 
lutely,  the  same,  shows  that  these  results  must  be  deter- 
mined, not  by  any  local  accidents,  or  by  moral  conduct 
peculiar  to  particular  groups  of  individuals,  but  by 
general  principles  of  some  kind  to  which  certain  human 


WAGES   AND   LABOUR   VALUES    147 

activities,  whenever  they  come  into  operation,  tend 
naturally  and  inevitably  to  conform.  The  practical 
meaning,  however,  of  a  broad  conclusion  like  this  will 
be  very  imperfectly  represented  if  we  give  our  minute 
attention  to  the  larger  incomes  only,  which  have  their 
origin  in  more  or  less  exceptional  enterprise.  We  must 
examine  with  the  same  minuteness  the  lower  incomes 
also,  which  mainly,  though  not  wholly,  consist  of  the 
earnings  of  wage-paid  labour.  We  must  not  content 
ourselves  with  ascertaining  that,  if  all  these  be  taken  in 
the  mass,  an  overwhelming  portion,  and  a  portion  the 
same  everywhere,  of  the  total  income  of  any  modern 
country  is  absorbed  by  them.  We  will,  therefore,  still 
using  Dr.  King's  figures  for  America,  presently  pursue 
our  comparison  between  that  country  and  the  United 
Kingdom  farther.  Let  us  first,  however,  realise  the 
nature  of  the  main  question  with  which  such  a  com- 
parison will  concern  itself. 

This  is  a  question  relating  to  the  universal  conditions 
under  which,  in  any  modern  country,  the  incomes,  which 
are  mainly  the  wages,  of  the  masses  of  the  population 
are  received  by  them,  and  relating  more  especially  to  a 
conception  of  the  nature  of  these  conditions,  which  still 
forms  the  basis  of  the  revolutionary  logic  of  to-day. 
The  import  of  this  conception,  when  put  into  plain 
words,  expresses  itself  in  the  theory  of  wages  which 
Marx,  though  he  did  not  invent  it,  was  the  first  thinker 
to  invest  with  what  claimed  to  be  a  scientific  form.  It 
has  the  merit  of  being  extremely  simple,  and  may  be 
summarised  in  a  few  words.  According  to  this  theory, 
society  under  modern  conditions  is  divided  into  two 
classes — a  small  employing  minority  who  own  all  the 
implements  of  labour,  and  a  vast  majority  who  own 
nothing  but  the  labour-power  resident  in  themselves. 
Such  being  the  case,  then,  labour  is  a  mere  commodity 
which  the  labourer  sells  to  the  employer ;  the  price  paid 
for  it  is  wages,  and  is  in  each  case  the  subject  of  a 
bargain.  If  the  two  parties  met  on  an  equal  footing,  the 
price  might  bear  some  relation  to  the  value  of  the  labour 
sold.  But  the  footing  on  which  as  an  actual  fact  they 
do  meet  is,  said  Marx,  in  its  very  essence  unequal.  The 
labourer  must  sell  his  labour  from  week  to  week,  or  he 


148     LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

will  starve.      The  employer  can  afford  to  wait.      The 
labourer,  therefore,  unless  he  is  prepared  to  die,  is  forced 
to  accept  a  price  which  bears  no  relation  whatever  to  the 
value  of  what  his  labour  produces,  but  is  measured  by 
the  cost  of  keeping  a  man  just  above  the  level  of  starva- 
tion.    This  result  is,  according  to  Marx,  mevitable,  not 
so  much  because  the  employer  is  wicked,  wicked  though 
he  generally  is,  as  because,  from  the  very  nature  of  a 
bargain,  nobody  will  give  more  for  anything  than  the 
lowest  price  which  the  vendor  can  be  induced  to  take 
for  it.     Hence,  said  Marx,  under  the  existing  economic 
system,  wages  are  everywhere  by  a  kind  of  universal 
fatality  forced  down  to  a  common,  and  to  the  lowest 
possible,    level.      And    this   theory,    in    spite    of    sonie 
modifications,  continues  to  dominate  socialist  thought 
to-day.     It  is,  indeed,  now  admitted  by  socialist  thinkers 
themselves  that  the  wage-earners  since  the  days  of  Marx 
have  managed  to  extract  from  the  employers  something 
in  excess  of  the  bare  means  of  subsistence ;  but  wages, 
they  say,  still  resemble  a  table-land,  the  level  of  which, 
although  it  may  have  risen  somewhat,   is  everywhere 
raised  but  slightly  above  the  uniform  cost  of  keeping  a 
human  being  alive;  and  this  rise,  such  as  it  is,  they 
attribute  to  collective  bargaining  through  unions,  which 
has  proved  to  be  of  greater  efficiency  than  Marx  was 
able  to  anticipate. 

Now,  there  is  nothing  in  this  account  of  the  matter 
which  is  a  priori  impossible.     On  the  contrary,  if  we 
take  it  as  a  mere   description  of  facts,   it  is  roughly 
applicable  to  England  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  when  the  modern  industrial  system  had  but 
partly  ^displaced  the  old.     Only  some  5  per  cent,  of  the 
adult  male  labourers  of  the  country  received  at  that 
time  as  much  as  23s.  a  week.     About  8  per  cent,  received 
from  185.  to  195.     The  average  for  87  per  cent,  was  not 
more  than  10s.  6d,     Even  socialists  cannot  deny  that 
wages  have  increased  since  then;  but  when  they  seek 
to  explain  this  rise  by  attributing  it  to  democratic  action 
in  the  form  of  collective  bargaining,  they  ignore  another 
change  more  important,  as  a  symptom,  than  the  actual 
rise  itself.     Collective  bargaining  may  account  for  the 
fact  that  wages  have  risen  as  a  whole,  but  it  will  not 


•M 


GRADUATION  OF  WAGES 


149 


account  for  the  fact  that  wages  have  risen  unequally. 
Still  less  will  it  account  for  a  certain  peculiar  change  in 
the  manner  in  which  wages  of  unequal  amounts  are  dis- 
tributed. In  these  two  latter  respects  what  has  actually 
happened  is  as  follows. 

In  the  first  place,  an  admitted  increase  in  the  minimum 
wage-rate  being  allowed  for,  wages  as  a  whole  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  twentieth  century  had  come  to  differ  from 
wages  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  in  the  fact  that 
their  range  and  the  minuteness  of  their  graduation  from 
a  given  minimum  upwards  were  very  much  greater  at 
the  later  period  than  they  had  been  at  the  earlier. 
Whereas  a  diagram  of  their  graduation  as  they  were  at 
the  earlier  date  would  have  had  the  contour  of  a  slight 
and  hardly  perceptible  slope,  a  diagram  of  their  gradua- 
tion as  they  were  a  century  later  would  have  had 
throughout  the  contour  of  an  ascending  staircase. 

In  the  second  place,  with  regard  to  the  number  of 
persons  amongst  whom  wages  of  various  amounts  were 
distributed,  the  distribution  at  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth  century  was  what  is  called  "pyramidal."  A 
century  later  it  had,  up  to  a  certain  point,  come  to 
assume  the  form  of  a  pyramid  upside  down.  This  means 
that,  at  the  earlier  of  the  two  dates  the  most  numerous 
class  of  recipients  was  the  class  whose  wages  were  lowest, 
and  that  as  the  wages  increased  the  number  of  the 
recipients  declined ;  whereas  a  century  later  those  who 
received  the  minimum,  which  was  then  (we  may  say) 
£40,  were  very  much  less  numerous  than  those  who 
received  £50,  that  these  again  were  less  numerous  than 
those  who  received  £70,  and  these  yet  again  less  numer- 
ous than  those  who  received  £90;  but  that  after  some 
such  point  the  pyramidal  order  reasserted  itself,  those 
who  received  £90  outnumbering  those  who  received  as 
much  as  £100;  whilst  as  to  the  salaried  class,  those 
who  earned  more  than  £1000  were,  in  respect  of  their 
numbers,  a  mere  vanishing  quantity. 

This,  roughly  stated,  is  what  has  happened  in  the 
United  Kingdom  after  a  century  of  bargaining  between 
the  employing  classes  and  the  employed ;  but  it  has  not 
happened  in  the  United  Kingdom  only.  A  situation 
essentially  similar  has  developed  itself  in  America  also, 


\ 


150     LIMITS  OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

and  during  a  much  shorter  period.  Thus,  in  a  table 
devoted  to  the  earnings  of  married  men,  Dr.  King  divides 
these  into  twelve  graduated  amounts,  ranging  from  a 
minimum  of  £50  up  to  nearly  £300 ;  and  his  figures  show 
that  for  every  50  men  earning  no  more  than  £50,  there 
were  300  earning  £70,  600  earning  £80,  1000  earning 
£100,  and  2700  earning  £150.  That  point  having  been 
reached,  the  same  change  occurred  which  occurred  in 
the  United  Kingdom  lower  down  in  the  scale.  Thus,  the 
number  of  those  whose  earnings  averaged  £170  was  only 
2100;  the  earnings  of  only  1600  reached  or  approached 
£200 ;  and  the  earnings  of  only  600  reached  or  approached 
£300. 

To  many  readers  these  details  may  doubtless  seem  dry 
enough,  but  their  dryness  will  vanish  when  we  realise 
their  general  import;  for  the  remarkable  parallelism 
which  they  have  here  been  cited  to  illustrate  between  the 
results  of  bargaining  for  wages  in  these  two  widely 
separated  countries  is  virtually  a  refutation,  so  far  as 
this  question  is  concerned,  of  the  theory  which  has  been 
the  basis  of  all  revolutionary  agitation  from  the  middle 
of  the  nineteenth  century  down  to  the  present  time. 

This  theory  has,  as  we  have  seen  already,  its  root  in 
the  idea  of  a  bargaining  process  which,  since  one  of  the 
parties  to  it  is  in  a  position  to  bide  his  time,  whilst  the 
very  life  of  the  other  depends  on  his  selling  his  wares — 
namely,  his  personal  efforts — immediately,  enables  the 
former  to  beat  down  the  price  of  these  wares,  no  matter 
what  their  value,  to  the  minimum  which  will  enable  the 
latter  to  keep  body  and  soul  together.     Now,  such  a 
situation,   let   it   be   said   again,    is   conceivable.      The 
question  is,  does  it,  as  a  general  fact,  exist  ?     Is  it  the 
typical  situation  which  capitalism,  after  a  century  of 
trial,  has  produced  ?     A  mere  glance  at  indubitable  facts 
is  enough  to  show  that  it  is  not.     No  minute  insistence 
on  the  accuracy  of  detailed  figures  is  necessary  to  show 
that  such  a  situation,  if  it  prevails  at  all,  prevails  in 
relation    to    a    minority    of    the    wage-earners    only — a 
minority  the  proportions  of  which  we  shall  very  greatly 
exaggerate   if   we    say   that,    in   the   leading   capitalist 
countries  of  the  world  it  amounts  to,  or  even  approaches, 
pne-fifth  of  the  whole.     Let  us  suppose,  then,  that  the 


ASCENDING  WAGES 


151 


wages  of  as  many  as  one-fifth  of  the  wage-earners  are 
determined,  as  Marx  argues,  not  by  the  value  of  their 
products,  but  merely  by  the  naked  cost  of  the  minimum 
of  food  required  by  them.  The  typical  question  as  to 
wages  still  remains  unanswered.  The  fact  that  the 
employer  pays  this  irreducible  minimum  to  a  fifth  of  his 
men,  but  to  a  fifth  of  his  men  only,  does  but  bring  into 
prominence  the  fact  that,  in  dealing  with  the  vast 
majority  of  them,  the  price  which  he  actually  pays  is 
not  this  minimum  at  all ;  it  is  this  minimum  plus  some 
amount  added  to  it,  which  in  each  case  must,  according 
to  the  psychology  of  Marx,  cost  the  employing  Shylock 
a  twinge  of  acute  pain. 

Thus,  the  question  as  to  wages  generally  which  really 
requires  explanation  is  not  why  they  tend  as  a  whole  in 
the  direction  of  a  common  minimum,  but  why  they  tend 
to  move,  in  various  degrees,  away  from  it.  To  say  that 
this  result  has  been  due  to  the  pressure  of  collective 
bargaining  is  no  answer  at  all.  So  far  as  collective  bar- 
gaining is  concerned,  there  is  an  upward  pressure  all 
along  the  line ;  but  in  the  case  of  each  section  of  wage- 
earners  the  result  of  this  pressure  differs.  All  along  the 
line  there  is  a  downward  pressure  on  the  part  of  the 
employers  also.  In  each  case  they  give  way  up  to  a 
certain  point,  but  they  do  not  give  way  beyond  it. 
What,  then,  are  the  final  limits  between  which,  as 
extremes,  the  conscious  process  of  bargaining  can  do  no 
more  than  reach  some  mean  ?  These  extreme  limits  are 
in  all  cases  the  same.  The  lower  limit  is  the  smallest 
possible  sum  on  which  a  wage-earner  can  be  kept  alive. 
The  upper  limit  is  determined  no  less  rigidly  by  the  total 
product  of  the  business  in  which  the  wage-earners  play 
a  part.^  But,  these  limits  being  present  in  all  cases  alike, 
how  is  it  that,  as  the  result  of  individual  transactions, 
the  intermediate  sums  finally  agreed  on  vary,  so  that  out 
of  1000  men  working  for  the  same  emplover  some  will 
get  £40  or  £50,  others  £60  or  £70,  others  £80  or  a  £100, 
others  £150,  others  £200,  and  a  few  very  much  more  ? 

*  This  is  true  of  the  self-directed  labourer  also.  His  income  must  be 
something  between  the  maximum  he  could  produce  if  he  strained  his 
muscles  to  tie  utmost,  and  the  minimum  which,  produced  with  more 
desultory  work,  would  just  save  him  from  death. 


152     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

In  the  light  of  the  facts  and  figures  which  we  have  just 
been  considering,  one  thing  is  evident.  However  the 
results  of  each  individual  transaction  may  be  affected 
by  the  personal  temper  of  those  directly  concerned  in 
it,  they  are  affected  by  it  to  a  small  extent  only.  They 
are  mainly  determined  by  certain  facts  or  forces  which 
are  altogether  external  to  any  cupidity,  generosity,  any 
strength  or  weakness  of  will,  which  is  peculiar  to  any 
one  employer  or  any  one  body  of  workmen ;  and  that 
such  is  the  case  is  evident  for  the  two  following  reasons. 
One  of  these  is  the  fact  that,  throughout  any  one  country, 
the  graduations  of  wages  which  result  from  countless 
individual  transactions  tend  in  all  like  industries  to  be 
uniform.  The  other  is  the  fact  that,  if  two  great  coun- 
tries are  compared,  the  details  of  this  graduation  are 
relatively  the  same  in  each,  even  in  respect  of  their  most 
unlikely  particulars. 

To  what,  then,  is  this  elaborate  graduation,  as  a  fact 
in  itself,  and  to  what  is  its  world-wide  but  unintended 
uniformity,  due  ?  Here  is  a  question  to  which  there  is 
only  one  answer.  The  graduation  is  due  to  the  fact  that 
industry,  as  intellectualised  by  the  modern  scientific 
oligarchy,  is  a  process  the  product  of  which,  to  a  degree 
far  greater  than  was  the  case  under  simpler  systems, 
depends  on  the  efforts  of  men  who  differ  widely  from  one 
another  in  their  several  degrees  of  efficiency,  some  of 
them  adding  more  to  the  total,  some  of  them  adding  less, 
and  wages  being  determined  by  the  particular  efficiency 
of  each ;  whilst  the  graduation  is  similar  in  different  and 
distant  countries  for  the  simple  reason  that  Nature,  in 
dealing  with  different  populations,  distributes  unequal 
efficiencies  in  very  much  the  same  way. 

Even,  however,  if  all  this  be  granted,  those  who  cling 
to  the  idea  that  the  wage-earners  nevertheless  are  robbed 
of  some  enormous  share  of  the  value  of  their  products 
somehow,  may  yet  as  a  matter  of  theory  urge  the  fol- 
lowing argument.  Wages,  it  is  open  to  them  to  say, 
may  be  adjusted  with  perfect  accuracy  to  the  value  of 
every  wage-earner's  personal  product  in  this  sense,  that, 
if  the  work  of  A  is  worth  double  the  work  of  B,  B  is 
certain  to  get  for  it  twice  the  price  that  A  gets ;  but  that 
A  and  B,  to  a  like  fractional  amount,  may  each  be 


POSSIBLE   UNDERPAYMENT        153 

defrauded  of  wages  really  due  to  him.  A's  work  may 
be  worth  £200,  and  B's  work  may  be  worth  £100;  but 
if  B,  instead  of  £100  gets  £75  only,  and  if  A,  instead  of 
£200,  gets  only  £150,  the  difference  between  the  larger 
of  these  two  sums  and  the  less  will  be  strictly  propor- 
tionate to  the  difference  between  the  two  values  pro- 
duced, yet  each  man  will  be  the  victim  of  a  similarly 
proportionate  theft,  his  receipts  falling  short  of  his 
product  to  the  extent  of  one  quarter.  The  facts  of 
graduation  may  no  doubt  be  inconsistent  with  an  indis- 
criminate robbery  of  the  kind  imagined  by  Marx,  but 
they  are  perfectly  compatible  with  the  supposition  that 
wages  are  everywhere  curtailed  by  a  system  of  embezzle- 
ments which,  though  not  indiscriminate,  are  monstrous. 

Now,  in  this  argument,  just  as  in  the  argument  of 
Marx  that  all  wages  tend  downwards  to  one  irreducible 
minimum,  there  is  nothing  which,  as  a  matter  of  mere 
theory,  niight  not  or  may  not  be  true.  Here,  again,  the 
question  is.  Does  the  theory  coincide  with  actual  facts  ? 
And  certain  facts  are  ascertainable  which  will  enable  us 
to  reach  an  answer,  not  indeed  absolutely  precise,  but 
sufficiently  so  to  enable  us  to  establish  a  broad  con- 
clusion. For  if  the  wage-earning  classes  as  a  whole  are, 
to  some  enormous  extent,  really  the  victims  of  a  theft- 
system  of  the  kind  described,  the  stolen  portion  of  their 
products  is  bound  to  be  discoverable  somewhere  in  the 
incomes  unduly  swollen  of  other  people  of  some  sort. 
The  question  is,  then.  Who  can  these  other  people  be? 
Before  we  can  go  further,  it  is  necessary  to  understand 
this. 

If  to  any  socialist  meeting  in  Chicago  or  New  York 
this  question  were  put  as  follows,  "  Who  are  the  great 
embezzlers  of  income  produced  by,  and  therefore  due 
to,  the  masses  of  the  American  people  ?  "  there  can  be 
no  doubt  as  to  what  the  instant  answer  would  be.  It 
would  be,  "  The  factory  kings,  .the  railroad  kings,  the 
oil  kings,  the  kings  of  finance  and  speculation  " — men 
whose  tvpe  would  be  indicated  by  shouts  of  **  Vander- 
bilt,"  "  Harriman,"  "  Carnegie,"  "  Rockefeller,"  "  Mor- 
gan." If  a  similar  question  were  put  to  a  socialist 
meeting  in  London,  the  answer  would  be  substantially 
the  same,  though  the  names  of  typical  plunderers  might 


154     LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

be  less  easy  to  find.  On  either  occasion  orators  would 
spring  from  their  seats  and  descant  on  the  outward  signs 
by  which  such  men  may  be  known — their  palaces  in 
Grosvenor  Square,  or  Fifth  Avenue,  the  tiaras  of  their 
wives,  their  moors  in  Scotland,  their  salmon  rivers  in 
Norway,  and  the  luxury  of  their  monstrous  yachts.  In 
America  and  Europe  alike  the  typical  embezzler,  the 
typical  cause  of  poverty,  who  robs  the  labourer's  home 
of  the  necessaries,  and  the  middle-class  home  of  the 
modest  embellishments  of  life,  figures  in  socialist  art  as 
a  species  of  bloated  ogre,  clutching  so  many  sacks,  each 
of  them  labelled  "  A  million  "  or  "  Ten  million  dollars." 
That  is  to  say,  according  to  current  ideas  of  him,  the 
typical  embezzler,  be  his  country  what  it  may,  obviously 
belongs  to  that  small  cluster  of  persons  whose  wealth 
is  sufficiently  great  to  be  matter  of  international,  or  at 
least  national,  knowledge,  and  especially  so  great  as  to 
be  worthy  of  celebration  by  newspapers. 

Now,  if  ideas  of  this  kind  have  any  justification  any- 
where, they  have  it  in  the  recent  growth  of  enormous 
incomes  in  America;  and  it  may  be  reasonably  con- 
tended that  incomes  such  as  these,  which  transcend  all 
sane  possibilities  of  the  amplest  private  expenditure,  are 
liable  to  convert  themselves  into  implements  of  public 
and  political  corruption.  But  to  suppose  that  they 
represent  any  appreciable  abstraction  from  what  would 
be  otherwise  the  income  of  the  nation  generally,  will, 
when  facts  are  examined,  reveal  itself  as  a  pure  delusion. 
The  number  and  aggregate  income  of  the  super- 
millionaires  of  America,  and  the  number  and  aggregate 
income  of  the  class  which  in  the  United  Kingdom  most 
nearly  approaches  them,  have  been  given  here  already. 
The  result  of  what  Mr.  Webb  would  call  a  "  recovery 
by  the  people  "  of  the  entire  income  of  this  class  in 
America  would  mean,  in  the  language  of  school-boys, 
a  weekly  "tip  "  of  a  threepenny-bit  for  everybody;  and 
a  similar  "  recovery  "  by  the  people  of  the  United  King- 
dom would  mean  for  everybody  a  weekly  "  tip  "  of  three 

halfpence. 

Let  us,  however,  suppose  that  the  robbery  of  the 
poorer  classes  by  the  richer  is  imputed,  not  to  a  little 
cluster    of    super-millionaires    only,    but    to    the    semi- 


THE  RECOVERABLE  MAXIMUM    155 

millionaires  as  well — that  is  to  say,  everybody  whose 
income  was  as  much  as  £20,000.     The  number  of  this 
class  in  America  was  approximately  3000.     It  was  in  the 
United  Kingdom  approximately  1500.     If  we  suppose 
that  every  one  of  such  persons  stole  the  whole  of  his 
income,  and  the  people  "  recovered  "  what  would  vul- 
garly be  called  "  the  lot,"  the  results  would  be  doubtless 
superior  to  those  we  have  just  considered.     The  weekly 
"  tip  "  would  in  America  be  raised  to  tenpence-half- 
penny,  and  in  the  United  Kingdom  to  fourpence.     Or, 
again,  if  we  find  it  amusing,  we  may  carry  our  supposi- 
tions further.    We  may  first  consider  what  would  happen 
if   the   people   of   the   two   countries    "  recovered  "    all 
incomes  in  excess  of  £5000,  and  then  what  would  happen 
if   they    "  recovered  "    all   that   exceeded    £3000.     We 
should  find  that  the  "  recovery  "  meant  for  the  American 
workman  a  rise  in  wage-rates  of  a  penny-farthing  in 
every  shilling,  and  for  the  British  a  rise  of  a  penny. 
But  if  we  wish  to  deal  with  the  matter  seriously,  we 
may  pass  on  at  once  to  a  supposition  probably  wider 
than  the  widest  to  which  any  temperate  socialist  in  cold 
blood  would  commit  himself.     This  is  the  supposition 
that  every  man  who  receives  an  income  of  more  than 
£1000  a  year  steals  as  much  of  it  from  "the  people" 
as  happens  to  exceed  that  sum.     The  supposition  is, 
of  course,  absurd,  but  it  will  nevertheless  be  interesting 
to  see  how  it  works  out.     The  total  of  incomes  in  excess 
of  £1000  formed  in  both  countries  17  per  cent,  or   18 
of  the   total;   but   if  we   suppose   that   the   recipients 
are  severally  taken  to  have  come  by  as  much  as  £1000 
honestly,  the  portion  assumed  to  be  stolen  will  have 
been    in    America    11    per    cent.,    and    in    the    United 
Kingdom  it  will  not  have  been  more  than  8.      Thus, 
a  "recovery  by  the  people"  at  the  beginning  of  the 
twentieth  century  of  all  incomes  which  exceed   £1000 
per  head  would  have  meant  for  the  American  workman 
a  rise  in  wages  at  the  rate  of  a  penny-halfpenny  in  the 
shilling,  and  would  have  meant  for  his  British  comrade 
a  rise  of  about  one  farthing  less. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  insist  on  either  of  these  figures 
as  exact.  The  broad  fact  which  alone  concerns  us  here 
is  this,  that  even  if  we   estimate  the  possibilities  of 


156    LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 


L 


ii 


recovery  "  at  a  maximum,  the  object  in  view  being 
a  more  complete  adjustment  of  wages  or  other  payments 
to  the  actual  product  of  workers  varying  in  their  degrees 
of  efficiency,  such  a  "  recovery  "  would  result  in  no 
greater  change  than  that  which  is  constantly  due  to 
a  good  business  year  or  a  bad  one.  It  would  effect  no 
change  more  noticeable  in  the  existing  scheme  of  dis- 
tribution than  that  which  would  be  effected  in  the  con- 
figuration of  a  human  being  if  his  measurement  round 
the  waist  rose  from  thirty-five  inches  to  thirty-eight  or 
forty.  In  other  words,  within  a  maximum  fraction, 
whether  of  one-ninth  or  one-twelfth  of  the  total  amount 
involved,  the  various  producing  units  under  the  modern 
industrial  oligarchy  tend  to  receive,  in  all  their  various 
degrees,  what  their  personal  work  is  worth,  this  fact 
being  shown  by  the  identity  of  the  complex  features  of 
the  general  scheme  of  distribution  which  comes  into 
being  wherever  that  system  operates. 

The  facts,  however,  as  thus  far  stated,  are  in  the  main 
empirical.  They  are  facts  which  experience  and  observa- 
tion show  to  be  the  results,  natural  and  unintended,  of 
that  principle  of  industrial  oligarchy  (commonly  de- 
scribed as  "  capitalism  on  the  great  scale ")  which, 
having  established  itself  first  in  England,  became  there 
widely  prevalent  about  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  in  America  about  fifty  years  later,  and  in  Ger- 
many after  the  conclusion  of  the  Franco-Prussian  war. 
Such  results  being  peculiar  to  the  novel  system  in  ques- 
tion, they  must  obviously  have  been  due  to  the  develop- 
ment of  the  oligarchic  principle  somehow;  but  if  we 
wish  to  render  them  intelligible — if  we  wish  to  see  why 
these  results  have  shaped  themselves  as  they  have  done 
everywhere,  and  have  not  shaped  themselves  otherwise, 
it  is  necessary  to  connect  them  with  the  working  of  the 
oligarchic  principle  in  detail ;  and  this  task  can  be  ac- 
complished in  one  way  only.  It  can  be  accomplished 
only  by  a  comparison  more  or  less  precise,  not  between 
the  affairs  of  one  country  and  the  contemporary  affairs 
of  others,  but  between  the  affairs  of  some  one  typical 
country  as  they  actually  are  to-day,  and  the  affairs  of 
that  country  itself  as  they  were  when  the  new  system  was 
beginning  to  displace  the  old;  but  the  old,  though  its 


COMPARISON   WITH   THE   PAST     157 

days  were  numbered,  was  the  dominant  system  still. 
There  is  one  country,  and  one  country  only,  in  which 
evidence  sufficiently  definite  for  such  a  comparison  can 
be  found.  That  country  is  England.  Not  only  are  the 
statistics  of  production  and  distribution  in  England  or 
the  United  Kingdom  voluminous  with  regard  to  con- 
ditions that  prevail  to-day,  but  similar  records  are 
extant,  curiously  minute  and  comprehensive,  of  the 
corresponding  conditions  as  they  were  more  than  a 
hundred  years  ago.  The  principal  changes  which  such 
a  comparison  reveals,  together  with  their  inner  signifi- 
cance, shall  be  reviewed  in  the  following  chapter. 


CHAPTER   III 

A   CENTURY   OF   CHANGING   DISTRIBUTION 

The  income  of  England  in  the  year  1801  was,  accord- 
ing to  a  number  of  concurrent  evidences,^  about  180 
million  pounds,  or  £20  per  head  of  a  population  of 
9  million.  The  income  of  the  United  Kingdom  about 
the  year  1907  was,  as  we  have  seen  already,  about  2100 
million,  or  £47  per  head  of  population  of  45  million. 
Now,  if  the  process  of  production  had  itself  undergone 
no  change  except  such  as  resulted  from  an  increase  in 
the  number  of  persons  engaged  in  it,  the  simplest 
arithmetic  will  show  us  that,  in  the  year  1907,  the  income 
of  the  United  Kingdom  would  not  have  been  more  than 
900  million,  whereas  it  actually  was  900  million  with 
1200  million  added  to  it.  About  an  eighth  of  this  incre- 
ment, however,  was  derived  from  British  enterprise 
abroad ;  and,  since  no  home  labour  was  involved  in  it, 
it  cannot  be  attributable  to  any  novel  forces  acting  on 
the  population  of  the  British  Islands  themselves.  The 
home-produced  increment,  which  here  alone  concerns 
us,  will  have  been  accordingly  about  1050  million.  If, 
then,  it  be  true  that  the  modern  increase  of  wealth  is 
due  primarily  to  the  Mind  of  a  novel  oligarchy  of  em- 

1  In  tlie  year  1801  an  income-tax  was  imposed  on  all  incomes  exceed- 
ing £60  a  year,  or  23^9.  a  week  'lliese  incomes  were  classified  in  the 
returns  according  to  their  total  amounts,  the  sources  not  being  specified, 
and  were  divided  seriatim  into  34  groups.  There  is  also  a  large  mass  of 
evidence  relating  to  agricultural  and  other  earnings  below  23.y.  a  week. 
iMulhall,  in  summing  up  the  records  relating  to  Poor-relief  in  Kngland 
at  various  periods  gives  the  income  of  England  (including  >\'ales) 
in  1801-5  as  £180,000,000.  His  computation  was  independent  of  those 
on  which  the  same  sum,  as  given  in  the  text,  are  founded.  It  is  neces- 
sary in  dealing  with  that  period  to  take  England  alone,  England  being 
the  part  of  the  l.'nited  Kingdom  which  was  first ''  industrialised,"  and  no 
sufficient  records  with  regard  to  Ireland  having  been  then  in  existence. 

168 


THE  CRUCIAL  CHANGE 


159 


ployers,  as  a  force  directing  the  labour  by  which  matter 
is  moved  and  manipulated,  it  will  follow  that,  at  the 
present  time,  more  than  half  of  the  income  of  the  United 
Kingdom  is  produced  in  a  primary  sense  by  a  body  of 
persons  which,  numerically,  is  so  small  as  to  be  hardly 
visible. 

The  actual  meaning,  however,  of  this  proposition  is 
not  so  paradoxical  as  it  seems.  What  it  comes  to  is  that, 
at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century  there  was  on 
an  average  one  directing  mind,  whether  that  of  an  indi- 
vidual or  two  or  more  partners,  for  every  500  or  600 
labourers,  whereas  in  any  comparable  undertakings  a 
hundred  years  before  the  labourers  directed  by  one  Mind 
would  have  been,  we  may  say  roughly,  a  couple  of 
hundred  only/  But  the  difference  between  the  two 
periods  may  be  further  explained  thus.  At  the  begin- 
ning of  the  nineteenth  century,  about  one-third  of  the 
productive  business  of  the  country  was  carried  on  by 
independent  workers  or  small  family  groups,  and  another 
third  by  employers  on  a  very  small  scale — still  a  numer- 
ous class,  such  as  jobbing  builders,  plumbers,  makers 
of  carts,  and  so  forth — who  worked  as  labourers  them- 
selves along  with  their  own  subordinates.  Not  more 
than  one-third  of  the  productive  business  of  England 
had  so  far  passed  into  the  hands  of  industrial  oligarchs, 
or  employers  whose  individual  profits  reached  or  ex- 
ceeded £1000  a  year.  In  other  words,  businesses  of  the 
modern  oligarchic  kind — and  even  these  were  small  as 
compared  with  their  successors  of  to-day — produced  at 
the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  33  per  cent,  only 
of  the  industrial  output  of  England,  and  the  smaller 
businesses,  which  were  absolutely  or  relatively  demo- 
cratic, produced,  to  speak  roughly,  67  per  cent.  A 
hundred  years  later  the  oligarchic  businesses  were  pro- 
ducing 86  per  cent.  The  democratic  businesses  produced 
no  more  than  14  per  cent.  The  latter  persisted,  and 
they  persist,  in  various  familiar  forms  such  as  those 

^  The  figures  given  as  to  industries  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth 
century  are  based  on  the  income-tax  assessments  for  the  year  1812,  pub- 
lished in  the  year  1815.  The  income-tax  tables  for  the  year  1801 
classify  incomes  according  to  their  total  amounts  only,  without  indicat- 
ing their  source. 


■■  mt^    ■■   -»■-  . 


160     LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

which    have    just    been    mentioned.      Their    absolute 
number,  apparently,  has  not  increased  or  diminished; 
but,  relatively  to  the  increased  population,  it  had  by 
the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  dwindled  to  a  fifth 
of  what  it  had  been  at  the  beginning  of  it.     Their  profits, 
ranging   from    £80   a   year  to    £1000,   representmg   an 
average  of  something  less  than  £300,  appear  to  be  much 
what  they  were  a  hundred  years  ago.     The  oligarchic 
businesses,  on  the  other  hand— namely,  those  producing 
profits  of  £1000  a  year  and  upwards— have,  concurrently 
with  the  relative  decline  of  the  others,  increased  in  two 
ways.     Each  of  the  employing  units  has  brought  within 
the  circle  of  his  influence  a  larger  number  of  labourers, 
and  the  average  product  per  employee  has  been  raised 
on  an  average  in  the  ratio  of  4  to  10.     Of  this  fact  it  will 
be  sufficient  to  give  two  illustrations.     If  the  oligarchic 
businesses  of  England  had  remained  what  they  were  at 
the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  except  for  the 
fact  that  they  had  increased  in  the  same  ratio  as  the 
population,  their  total  profits  at  the  beginning  of  the 
twentieth  century  would  not  have  exceeded  50  million 
pounds,  the  average  profit  per  business  being   £2500. 
Their  actual  profits,  as  we  have  seen,  were  at  that  time 
300  million,  the  average  profit  per  business  being  £10,000. 
In  the  year  1812  there  were  in  England  only  1000  busi- 
nesses which  severally  produced  a  profit  of  more  than 
£3000.     The  total  profits  of  all  of  them  were   barely 
above  6  million,  £6000  being  the  average  profit  of  each. 
Ninety  years  later,  of  the  thousand  largest  businesses 
the  profit  of  the  smallest  did  not  fall  short  of  £50,000; 
the  aggregate  profits  of  all  were  180  million,  and  the 
average  profit  of  each  was  £180,000. 

It  is,  therefore,  in  the  development  of  these  larger 
businesses  since  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century 
—in  the  application  of  single  units  of  brain-power  to  the 
direction  of  a  larger  and  larger  number  of  labourers— 
that  we  must  look  for  the  action  of  oligarchy  as  the 
cause  of  increasing  wealth.  The  case  is  summed  up  by 
Goethe  in  the  second  part  of  Faust,  where  the  secret 
of  material  progress  is  said  to  consist  in  this : 

"One  Mind  suffices  for  a  thousand  bands," 


SIZE   OF  BUSINESSES 


161 


and  m  the  progress  of  England  since  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth  century  this  fact  is  presented  to  us  in  a 
definitely  measurable  form.  At  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  each  of  the  larger  employers,  such 
as  they  then  were,  directed  on  an  average  about  250 
labourers,  the  total  product  per  employee  being  about 
£40.  A  century  later  each  of  the  larger  employers 
directed  on  an  average  the  labour  of  twice  or  three  times 
as  many,  the  average  product  per  employee  being  raised 
from  £40  to  £100.  As  a  natural  consequence  of  the 
increased  productive  power  which  industry  acquired  as 
the  principle  of  oligarchy  developed  itself,  it  has  come 
about  in  the  course  of  a  few  generations  that  about  five- 
sevenths  of  the  business  output  of  England  is  produced 
under  the  direction  of  the  minds  of  a  few  men ;  and  here, 
when  roughly  translated  into  terms  of  statistical  and 
historical  fact,  we  have  the  import  of  the  thesis  that, 
at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century,  the  Mind  of 
the  larger  employers  was  the  primary  producer  of  an 
income  of  some  1050  million  pounds,  added  to  an  income 
which  would  otherwise  have  been  900  million  only. 

And  now  we  reach  the  question  to  which  all  these 
observations  have  been  tending.  If  the  total  reward 
which,  in  the  shape  of  profits— profits  being  taken  as 
including  all  interest  on  industrial  capital— went  to 
Mmd  as  embodied  in  the  persons  of  the  industrial  oli- 
garchy and  their  associates,  was,  as  we  have  seen,  about 
300  million  pounds,  and,  if,  as  we  have  seen  also,  these 
profits  would  have  amounted  to  no  more  than  50  million 
had  industrial  methods  remained  what  they  had  been 
a  century  before,  and  had  all  the  subsequent  conquests 
of  directing  Mind  been  absent,  the  question  which  con- 
fronts us  is  this.  Why,  if  Mind  is  the  producer  of  a 
total  increment  of  1050  million,  do  the  representatives 
of  Mmd  get  only  250  million,  or  less  than  a  quarter  of 
it,  for  themselves?  What  becomes  of  the  remainder? 
The  more  we  reflect  on  the  detailed  facts  of  the  situation, 
the  more  evident  will  the  pertinence  of  this  question 
become.  For  these  men,  the  heads  of  the  larger  busi- 
nesses, are,  as  socialists  put  it,  '*the  great  national  pay- 
masters." The  wages  and  salaries,  which  are  the  in- 
comes of  the  vast  majority  of  the  population,  must  in 


1 


I  ) 


162    LIMITS  OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

the  first  instance  have  passed  into  these  men's  custody. 
Why,  then,  did  they  pay  away,  and  to  whom  did  they 
pay  away,  four-fifths  of  a  certain  increment,  if  their 
own  minds  had  really  produced  the  whole  of  it  ? 

To  this  question  there  are  two  principal  answers,  each 
of  which  goes  to  the  roots  of  the  modern  industrial 
system,  and  without  invalidating  the  thesis  that  the 
modern  increase  of  wealth  is  primarily  due  to  the  Mind 
of  the  modern  industrial  oligarchy,  modifies  its  practical 
import  by  showing  what,  in  actual  life,  the  operation  of 
such  an  oligarchy  implies. 

The  first  of  these  answers  may  be  given  by  means  of 
a  simple  illustration.     Let  us  suppose  that  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  modern  locomotive  engine  was  due  entirely 
to  the  genius  of  one  exceptional  man,  in  the  sense  that 
a  dozen  mechanics  by  blindly  following  his  directions 
presented  a  specimen  engine,  complete  in  every  detail 
of  its  mechanism,  to  a  world  which  would  never  have 
dreamed,  if  left  to  its  own  wisdom,  of  any  means  of 
traction  other  than  a  horse  or  a  donkey.     But  one  such 
specimen  engine,  however  perfect  and  powerful,  would, 
if  it  stood  alone,  be  nothing  more  than  a  toy,  or  a  wonder 
for  the  world  to  gape  at.     In  order  that  the  world  should 
derive  from  it  any  practical  benefit,  huge  works  would 
be  necessary  at  which  replicas  of  this  specimen  could  be 
turned  out  by  the  thousand.     Let  us,  then,   suppose 
further  that  this  same  man,  the  inventor,  establishes 
such  works  himself,  he  being  his  own  capitalist,   and 
secures  the  services,  not  of  twelve  but  of  twelve  thousand 
manual  workers,  all  of  whom  he  engages  for  the  specific 
purpose  of  so  moving  particles  of  matter  from  one  posi- 
tion to  another  that  finally,  like  pieces  of  a  puzzle,  they 
shall  coalesce  into  engines  devised  by  his  own  brain.    The 
operations  of  Mind,  as  embodied  in  the  persons  of  the 
great  employers,  could  not  be  exemplified  in  a  more 
complete  form  than  it  would  be  in  the  person  of  an 
industrial  genius  such  as  this. 

Now,  it  might  seem  that  here  we  should  have  two 
factors  only— namely,  the  labour  of  some  thousands  of 
men  moving  particles  of  matter  on  the  one  hand,  and 
a  single  mind  dictating  how  and  when  they  should  be 
moved  on  the  other.     In  actual  life,  however,  the  situa- 


SALARIED  MENTAL  WORKERS     163 

tion  would  be  widely  different.  Between  these  two 
factors  there  would  necessarily  be  a  third  connecting 
them.  The  most  absolute  monarch  who  ever  flattered 
himself  by  saying  "  L'etat  c'est  Moi  "  could  not  govern 
even  the  paltriest  province  unless  he  were  surrounded 
by  ministers,  each  of  whom  had  an  army  of  lesser  officials 
under  him ;  and  the  same  thing  holds  good  in  the  case 
of  the  intellectualised  industry  of  to-day.  If  Mind,  other 
than  the  minds  of  the  manual  labourers  themselves,  were 
represented  solely  by  that  of  the  supreme  employer,  and 
if  the  labourers  in  executing  their  thousands  of  daily 
tasks  had  to  get  their  orders  direct  from  him  or  from 
nobody,  he  would  not  find  minutes  in  the  longest  of 
working  days  for  issuing  orders  to  one  labourer  out  of 
a  hundred.  For  him,  the  first  thing  necessary  before  he 
could  set  his  business  going  would  be  to  secure  the 
services  of  certain  principal  managers — men  who  were 
capable  of  grasping  his  main  ideas,  and  were  masters  of 
the  technical  knowledge  required  for  putting  them  into 
execution.  His  next  step  would  be  to  get  together  a 
mixed  array  of  sub-managers,  draughtsmen,  calculators, 
clerks  and  foremen,  from  the  top  to  the  bottom  of  a 
long  descending  scale,  until  at  last  the  men  were  reached, 
who  would,  under  this  system  of  elaborate  mental  direc- 
tion, deal  with  particles  of  matter  by  the  use  of  their 
hands  and  muscles.^ 

Now,  all  these  officials,  no  less  than  the  employer 

^  As  a  type  of  the  difference  between  oligarchic  businesses  as  they 
had  come  to  be  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  and  as  they 
were  a  hundred  years  later,  we  may  say  with  approximate  accuracy  that 
for  every  five  or  six  hundred  manual  labourers  at  the  earlier  period 
there  would  have  been  five  employers,  each  directing  a  separate  busines.- 
of  his  own   and  employing  a  staff  of  100  or  120  labourers  and  3  or  4 
mental  workers.     At  the  later  period,  there  would  have  been  on  an 
average  1  employer  of  a  higher  order,  who,  superseding  the  original  5. 
employed  600  manual  labourers  and  45  mental  subordinates,  or  1  mental 
worker  to  every  12  manual,     'llie  proportions  borne  to-day  by  the  sub- 
ordinate mental  workers  to  the  manual  vary  greatly  in  different  busi- 
nesses, according  to  the  degree  and  quality  of  intellectualisation  from 
above.    Thus  m  the  construction  of  ships  (t.  e.  hulls)  there  was,  accord- 
ing to  the  Census  of  Production  (1907)  1  mental  subordinate  to  29 
manual  workers.     In  the  construction  of  marine  engines  there  was  1  to 
every  9.     In  the  following  businesses  the  proportions  were  these  :— 
Oas,  1  to  10  ;  Chemicals  and  Bicycles,  1  to  8 ;  Clocks  and  watches  1  to  3. 


164     LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

himself,    represent    not    manual    effort,    but    mental. 
Hence,  when  the  Mind  of  a  class  whose  functions  are 
mental  only,   and   involve  no  formative   contact   with 
material  substances  whatsoever,  is  spoken  of  as  directing 
the  operation  of  human  hands  which,  unless  they  are  in 
contact  with  such  substances,  produce  nothing  at  all, 
this  cannot  be  the  Mind  of  the  employing  class  alone. 
It  must,  in  practice,  include  another  class  as  well,  whose 
function  it  is  to  see  that  material  substances  are  handled 
in  accordance  with  a  purpose  which  the  brain  of  the 
employer  specifies.     Hence,  if  the  primary  peculiarity 
of  the  modern  industrial  system  is  the  extent  to  which, 
under  it,  the  handling  of  matter  is  intellectualised  by 
submission  to  the  control  of  a  small  employing  class,  a 
secondary  peculiarity  will  be  the  development  of  this 
class   of   mental   subordinates.      It   will,    moreover,   be 
natural  to  expect  that,  in  proportion  as  the  control  of 
the  employers  increases  in  range,  and  grows  more  and 
more  scientific,  these  mental  subordinates,  in  respect 
not  alone  of  their  number,  but  also  of  their  earnings, 
as   an   index   of   their   productive   value,   will   increase 
likewise,  and  increase  to  such  an  extent  that  even  the 
roughest  statistics  wUl  exhibit  an  unambiguous  record 

^  And  such  we  shall  find  to  be  the  case.     According  to 
Colquhoun,  whose  investigations  relate  to  the  year  1812, 
the  number  of  business  employees  in  England,  Scotland 
and    Ireland,    other   than    manual    labourers,    did    not 
amount  at  that  time  to  more  than  70,000,  their  average 
earnings  being  £70  per  head.     This  would  mean  that 
in  England  some  ten  or  twelve  years  earlier  the  number 
of  such  employees  could  not  have  exceeded  60,000,    their 
aggregate  earnings  being  just  over  4  million  pounds. 
Had  the  industrial  system  undergone  no  other  changes 
than  those  resulting  from  a  mere  increase  of  the  popula- 
tion, the  number  of  such  persons  employed  in  the  United 
Kingdom  rather  more  than  a  century  later  would  have 
been  300,000,  and  their  aggregate  earnings  but  just  over 
20  million  pounds.     As  a  matter  of  fact  their  number 

1  This  would  allow  on  the  average  about  three  mental  workers, 
besides  the  employer  or  the  employees,  to  every  business  in  England 
which  made  a  profit  exceeding  £310  a  year. 


SALARIED   MENTAL   WORKERS     165 

had  by  that  time  reached  one  million ;  ^  their  average 
earnings  had  risen  from  £70  per  head  to  £200,  and  their 
aggregate  income  had  risen  from  20  to  200  million. 
This  means  that  out  of  the  total  increment  ascribable 
primarily  to  the  Mind  of  the  supreme  employers,  the 
employers  had  to  part  with  180  million  in  payment  for 
the  services  of  a  new  class  of  mental  coadjutors.  If  this 
be  added  to  the  increment  retained  by  the  employers 
and  their  financial  associates  for  themselves,  the  share 
of  the  new  wealth  taken  by  these  two  groups  of  mental 
workers  together  will  have  amounted  to  430  million  out 
of  a  total  increment  of  1050  million. 

Who,  then,  appropriated  the  residue  ? 

This  residue  of  the  income — more  than  600  million — 
went  as  an  addition  to  the  wages  of  manual  labour. 
Had  manual  labour  throughout  the  United  Kingdom 
been  paid  in  the  year  1907  at  the  rates  prevailing  in 
En<]fland  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century — 
and  this  is  precisely  what  would  have  been  the  case  had 
the  doctrine  of  Marx  been  true — the  aggregate  income  of 
the  labourers  at  the  latter  of  these  two  dates  would 
have  barely  been  as  much  as  400  million  pounds.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  the  labourers'  share  of  the  increment 
raised  this  total  by  160  per  cent. 

Now,  in  one  sense  the  most  remarkable  feature  in  this 
division  of  the  spoils  of  progress  is  the  share  secured  by 
the  subordinate  mental  workers ;  for,  in  respect  of  the 
increases  alike  in  their  number  and  their  earnings,  these 
persons  are  practically  a  new  class. ^  When,  however,  the 
functions  of  mere  Mind  as  an  agent  of  production  are 
realised,  and  the  great  differences  in  efficiency  between 
some  minds  and  others,  the  rise  of  this  class  and  the 
wide  range  of  its  salaries  are  at  once  sufficiently  intelli- 

*  About  half  this  number  were  subject  to  income-tax,  their  average 
earning  being  about  £300  a  year.  The  earnings  of  the  other  half 
were  below  the  income-tax  level,  and  averaged  £100. 

2  As  the  result  of  the  investigations  of  a  committee  of  distinguished 
economists,  it  was  shown  in  a  paper  presented  to  the  British  Association 
at  Sheffield  that  out  of  a  non-assessed  income  of  1300  million,  about 
250  million  represented  (about  the  year  1907)  the  earnings  of  a  Lower 
Middle  Class,  in  which  the  lower  ranks  of  the  Salaried  Mental  Workers 
were  included. 


166    LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

gible  excepting  in  one  particular.     If  the  productive 
faculties  which  the  members  of  this  class  exercise  are 
such  as  to  command  payments,  notably  in  most,  and 
in  some  cases  enormously,  exceeding  those  of  the  highest 
manual    labour,    why    were    they    not    in    operation    a 
hundred  years  ago,  and  securing,  if  not  the  same,  yet 
proportionately  the  same  rewards  ?     Are  we  to  suppose 
that  in  the  course  of  a  hundred  years  the  percentage  of 
persons   born  with  such  capacities  has  trebled   itself? 
A  supposition  like  this  would  be  absurd.    The  percentage 
of  persons  in  whom  capacities  such  as  these  were  con- 
genital was,  presumably,  no  greater  at  the  beginning  of 
the  twentieth  century  than  it  had  been  a  century  before ; 
but  what  had  increased  in  number  and  become  novel  in 
kind  were  the  means  or  opportunities  of  applying  such 
faculties  to  productive  purposes.     Thus  the  construction 
of  a  ship  like  a  modern  Dreadnought  demands  and  gives 
scope  for  the  exercise  of  high  mathematical  talents,  by 
the  studious  development  of  which  a  number  of  picked 
workers  earn  large  rewards  to-day;  but  talents  of  this 
order  would  have  been  useless  in  the  days  of  Nelson, 
and  many   of  the   men   who  helped   to   construct  the 
Victory  may  have  had  in  them  the  makings  of  mathe- 
matical experts,  and  yet,  hardly  conscious  themselves 
of  endowments  then  so  sterile,  been  obliged  to  earn  their 
living  by  the  use  of  the  axe  and  hammer.     In  other 
words,  the  intellectualisation  of  industry,  which  primarily 
has  its  origin  in  the  Mind  of  the  supreme  directorate, 
increases  the  supply  of  subordinate   mental   talent   in 
action  by  creating  opportunities  for  the  use  of  faculties 
which  would  else  be  dormant. 

The  presence,  then,  of  the  subordinate  mental  workers 
as  a  factor  in  modern  industry  carries  its  explanation  on 
the  face  of  it,  and  though  it  considerably  modifies  the 
practical  import  of  the  thesis  that  the  modern  increase 
of  wealth  is  due  to  the  supreme  employers,  it  does  not 
conflict  with  that  thesis  in  any  fundamental  way.  But 
when  we  turn  from  mental  effort  to  manual,  and  consider 
the  fact  that  these  same  manual  labourers  have  secured 
far  more  of  the  increment  than  the  two  other  classes 
together,  it  may  seem  at  first  sight  that  the  case  is 
totally  different.     It  may  seem  either  that  the  thesis 


NOVEL  OPPORTUNITIES 


167 


in  question  is  in  itself  erroneous,  and  that  the  hands  and 
muscles  of  the  self-directed  average  man  do  increase  in 
efficiency,  which  that  thesis  denies,  or  else  that  the 
employers,  according  to  a  scheme  of  minutely  graduated 
generosity,  paid  twice  as  much  to  each  labourer  as  his 
labour  could  possibly  produce. 

Of  the  difficulty  thus  suggested  the  solution  is  dis- 
coverable in  two  sets  of  facts,  both  of  which  are  of  the 
first  importance,  but  which  are  in  current  controversy 
altogether  neglected.  One  of  them  is  purely  economic, 
the  other  is  moral,  political,  or,  in  a  general  sense,  social. 
The  latter  will  be  discussed  hereafter.  We  will  here 
confine  ourselves  to  the  former — namely,  facts  which  are 
purely  economic. 

In  the  case  of  mental  capacities,  such  as  an  innate 
talent  for  mathematics,  which  a  workman  is  incapable 
of  using  if  there  is  no  opportunity  for  their  use,  but 
which,  if  a  use  is  devised  for  them  by  the  genius  of  a 
scientific  employer,  he  at  once  does  his  utmost  to  culti- 
vate, and  finds  that  their  industrial  value  embodies  itself 
in  an  ample  salary — in  the  case  of  capacities  such  as 
these,  two  things  are  equally  evident.  One  is  that, 
apart  from  the  genius  of  the  scientific  employer,  the 
potential  talents  of  the  employee  would  be,  for  practical 
purposes,  as  though  they  did  not  exist.  The  other  is 
that,  in  the  same  practical  sense,  such  potential  talents 
would  be  equally  non-existent  unless  the  employee 
developed  them  by  certain  extra  efforts  of  his  own.  If 
the  employer  represents  the  oligarchic  principle  in  in- 
dustry, and  the  employee  the  democratic,  the  case  is 
similar  to  that  which  exists,  as  we  have  seen  already,  in 
the  sphere  of  political  government.  Action  from  above 
being  given,  there  is  not  only  submission  from  below, 
but  a  positive  reaction  also.  The  worker  who  develops 
high  mathematical  powers  in  response  to  the  demands 
of  an  employer  who  provides  him  with  the  opportunity 
of  using  them  is,  when  they  are  actually  used  by  him, 
and  his  earnings  are  thereby  increased,  a  co-creator 
of  the  increment  out  of  which  his  increased  earnings 

come. 

And  what  is  true  of  subordinate  mental  effort  is,  with 
certain  qualifications,  true  of  manual  effort  also.     The 


168     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

manual  labourers  of  to-day — or,  in  other  words,  the 
mass  of  average  men — would  produce  no  more  than  they 
did  a  hundred  years  ago  if  they  were  left  to  the  direction 
of  no  minds  other  than  their  own ;  for  they  would  have 
no  opportunity  of  doing,  in  the  way  of  productive  work, 
anything  different  from  what  they  did  a  hundred  years 
ago.  But  the  technical  control  of  their  labour  by  a 
scientific  oligarchy  being  given,  there  has  not  been  on 
the  part  of  masses  of  the  labourers  the  mere  passive 
response  of  conformity,  or  a  doing  under  the  guidance 
of  others  the  same  order  of  work  which  they  had  pre- 
viously been  doing  under  their  own.  In  many  respects 
there  have  been  changes  in  the  character  of  the  work 
itself,  and  the  labourers  have,  in  accordance  with  their 
several  natural  endowments,  been  called  on  to  exert 
themselves  in  the  development  of  various  faculties  which 
were  previously  unused  for  the  reason  that  they  were 
not  usable. 

Of  this  fact  a  rudimentary  but  a  very  striking  illustra- 
tion is  to  be  found  in  the  first  modern  event  which  awoke 
in  the  legislators  of  England  a  consciousness  of  industrial 
change.  This,  which  became  notorious  very  early  in  the 
nineteenth  century,  was  the  growing  employment  of 
children  of  tender  years  in  factories.  A  little  child  at 
the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  was  a  creature 
no  stronger  or  cleverer  than  its  predecessors  had  been  at 
the  time  of  the  Norman  Conquest ;  but  certain  master 
minds,  by  concentrating  themselves  on  the  industrial 
process,  had  so  far  simplified  a  number  of  manual  opera- 
tions, and  had  so  far  substituted  non-human  force  for 
human,  that  the  feeble  hands  and  the  limited  intelligence 
of  infants  were  able  to  produce  daily  the  value  of  a  loaf 
of  bread,  whereas  previously  they  produced,  and  could 
have  produced,  nothing.  The  infants  had  played  no 
part  in  devising  the  scientific  apparatus  on  which  the 
possible  exercise  of  their  productive  powers  depended. 
Were  the  apparatus  withdrawn,  their  small  productive 
powers  would  at  once  have  been  withdrawn  also.  But 
the  point  to  be  noted  is  that,  the  existence  of  the 
apparatus  being  given,  the  infants  in  using  it  were  not 
doing  to  order  something  which,  like  playing  a  game, 
they  would  have  done  somehow  in  any  case,  but  were 


NOVEL  GRADES  OF  LABOUR   169 

making  some  extra  (and  to  them  arduous)  effort,  the  like 
of  which  they  never  had  made  before. 

And  of  manual  labour  generally  under  the  modern 
industrial  system,  the  same  thing  holds  good,  not  in  all 
its  forms,  but  in  most  of  them.  It  is  true  that,  unlike 
infants,  the  majority  of  human  adults  must  in  any  state 
of  society  perform  manual  labour  of  some  kinds,  these 
kinds  being  such  as  are  necessary  for  the  bare  support 
of  life.  These  are  still  essential  to  production,  no  matter 
how  elaborate,  as  may  be  seen  when  some  piece  of  super- 
scientific  machinery  is  transported  by  a  carter  in  a  van 
to  the  premises  of  the  final  user.  The  carter  who,  acting 
under  orders,  does  this  kind  of  work  to-day,  does  nothing 
which  he  could  not  have  done,  and  would  not  have  had 
to  do  on  his  own  account,  had  he  been  a  mediaeval 
peasant  carting  his  own  barley.  He  differs  from  his 
predecessor  as  a  child  who  reproduces  on  tracing-paper 
certain  lines  which  a  drawing-master  has  drawn  on  a 
slate  beneath  it,  differs  from  a  child  who,  with  a  pencil 
equally  firm,  describes  on  a  blank  slate  figures  of  its  own 
devising.  The  sole  factor  present  in  the  first  case  and 
not  present  in  the  second  is  no  new  positive  effort  either 
of  mind  or  body,  but  a  passive  act  of  absolutely  easy 
obedience.  The  labourers  who  still  perform  work  of  this 
simple  kind  to-day  cannot  be  said  in  any  accurate  sense 
to  produce  more  to-day  by  any  faculties  resident  in 
themselves  than  their  predecessors  did  a  hundred  or  even 
two  thousand  years  ago ;  and  the  fact  that  these  men, 
whose  earnings  represent  the  minimum,  are  twice  as  well 
paid  as  their  grandfathers  for  work  precisely  similar,  is 
due  to  causes  of  a  moral  or  social  kind,  the  discussion 
of  which  must  be  reserved  for  a  later  stage  of  our 
argument. 

The  labourers,  however,  whose  work  is  still  of  this 
primitive  kind,  and  who  still  receive  the  minimum,  what- 
ever that  may  be,  have  sunk  under  the  modern  system 
to  a  relatively  small  minority;  and  the  minimum  sum 
secured  by  these  men  being  given,  the  fact  that  the 
majority  in  varying  degrees  earn  more  is  of  purely  eco- 
nomic origin;  and,  although  it  may  have  a  social  side 
also,  we  are  here  concerned  with  it  as  an  economic  fact 
alone.     We  have  seen,  then,  that  the  wages  generally,  a 


,1 


170     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

minimum  sum  being  given,  owe  all  their  upward  gradua- 
tions, in  so  far  as  these  occur,  to  a  corresponding  gradua- 
tion in  the  efficiencies  of  the  workers  earning  them. 
This  holds  good  under  all  systems  of  which  wages  form 
a  part.  What  concerns  us  here  is  the  fact  that,  in  pro- 
portion as,  under  the  modern  system  of  oligarchy,  in- 
dustry has  been  intellectualised  from  above,  the  gradua- 
tion of  the  wages,  not  only  of  mental,  but  of  manual 
work  also,  has  acquired  a  wider  range,  and  become  more 
minute  in  character,  than  it  was  when  this  system  of 
oligarchy  was  still  in  its  earliest  stages ;  and  if  we  com- 
pare industrial  oligarchy  as  it  is  to-day  with  what  it  was 
in  England  a  hundred  years  ago,  the  difference  between 
the  two  may  be  briefly  expressed  thus.  Any  employer 
demanding  work  from  his  labourers  is  like  a  schoolmaster 
setting  sums  to  his  class.  The  sums  set  by  the  typical 
employers  of  yesterday  were  all  so  simple  that  most  of 
the  class  could  do  them.  The  cleverest  boys  in  doing 
them  used  and  revealed  no  more  talent  than  the  dullest. 
The  sums  set  by  the  typical  employer  of  to-day,  though 
certain  of  them  are  simple  still,  are  for  the  most  part 
in  varying  degrees  difficult.  They  require  for  their  solu- 
tion talents  which  are  not  only  greater  than  those  pos- 
sessed by  all,  but  which  also,  before  they  are  usable  for 
any  particular  purpose,  must  be  cultivated  by  deliberate 
effort  on  the  part  of  the  possessors  themselves,  the  details 
of  such  effort  depending  on  what  the  purpose  is.  This 
is  what  socialists  forget  when  they  reason  about  labour 
as  a  commodity  which  is  bought  and  sold.  They  think 
of  it  as  a  commodity  which  is  always  of  one  grade  only, 
and  if  all  labour  were  still  of  those  simplest  kinds  of 
which  all  human  beings  must  be  capable  who  are  capable 
of  keeping  themselves  alive,  this  conception  would  corre- 
spond with  fact.  It  did,  we  may  roughly  say,  correspond 
with  fact  in  England  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth 
century  in  some  such  sense  as  this  :  that,  if  labour  at 
that  time  had  been  bought  by  the  larger  employers,  not 
from  the  labourers  directly,  but  through  some  salesman 
representing  them  at  a  central  office,  and  if  at  that  time 
an  employer  had  asked  to  be  supplied  with  labour-power 
to  the  extent  of  a  hundred  units,  most  of  the  units 
wanted  by  him  would  have  been  of  a  low,  and  a  more 


GRADES   AND   PRICES 


171 


or  less  uniform,  efficiency;  and  that  the  salesman  might 
have  taken  so  much  for  granted  unless  the  intending 
customer  had  made  some  statement  to  the  contrary. 
But  to  ask  him  in  the  same  fashion  for  a  hundred  units 
to-day  would  be  like  asking  a  wine-merchant  for  a 
hundred  bottles  of  wine.  An  order  given  in  these  general 
terms  would  be  meaningless.  The  salesman  of  to-day, 
were  it  necessary  to  explain  the  situation,  would  say  to 
the  employer,  "  What  qualities  of  labour  do  you  want  ? 
In  former  times  we  supplied  three  qualities  only.  Our 
chief  trade  was  in  the  lowest,  but  we  kept  them  all  in 
stock.  To-day  we  supply  the  article,  not  in  three 
qualities,  but  in  sixteen.  The  lowest  quality,  for  which 
the  demand  to-day  is  small,  we  keep  in  stock  as  we 
always  did,  but  the  higher  qualities  have  to  be  made 
to  order.  You  must  specify  in  each  case  what  you  want 
the  labourer  to  do ;  the  labourer,  so  far  as  he  can,  must 
make  himself  capable  of  doing  it,  and  the  extra  effort 
involved  in  his  self-preparation  must,  according  to 
circumstances,  be  secured  by  some  extra  payment." 

What  the  new  accomplishments  on  the  part  of  the 
manual  labourers  are  which  the  modern  oligarchy 
demands,  and  for  the  use  of  which  it  creates  opportuni- 
ties, need  not,  and  cannot,  be  discussed  in  detail  here. 
It  will  here  be  sufficient  to  indicate  their  general  char- 
acter. By  largely  substituting  for  mere  muscular  effort 
the  powers  of  steam  and  electricity,  and  thus  liberating 
the  labourer  from  duties  exhausting  to  mind  and  body, 
the  industrial  oligarchy  has  demanded  from  the  labourers 
generally,  and  has  thus  enabled  them  to  develop,  a  self- 
concentration  on  tasks  in  which  energy,  mainly  mental, 
plays  a  part  considerably  larger  than  it  did  in  the  tasks 
which  previously  were  alone  open  to  them.  These  novel 
tasks  remain  still  essentially  manual  in  the  sense  that 
they  involve,  and  are  in  each  case  bounded  by,  a  manual 
contact  on  the  labourer's  part  with  so  much  or  so  many 
of  certain  prescribed  substances  as  can  be  brought  within 
the  reach  of  one  pair  of  human  arms;  but  these  tasks 
have  become  matters  of  habituated  and  alert  attention 
rather  than  of  mere  muscular  endurance  on  the  one 
hand,  or  of  mere  tricks  of  dexterity,  themselves  difficult, 
on  the  other.     In  any  case  the  main  fact  which  concerns 


172    LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

us  here  is  this  :  that,  whatever  the  new  tasks  now  de- 
manded of  the  manual  labourers  may  be,  they  involve 
on  the  whole  more  self-preparation,  and  a  greater 
graduation  of  efficiencies  from  an  inevitable  minimum 
upwards,  than  did  the  tasks  demanded  by  the  employers 
a  hundred  years  ago.^  Since,  then,  each  of  these  new 
efficiencies  needs  a  voluntary  effort  on  the  labourers' 
part  to  develop  it,  and  since,  in  its  own  degree,  each 
adds  its  something  to  the  success  of  the  employer's 
projects,  the  employer  is  bound  to  elicit  them  in  the 
only  way  that  is  practicable — namely,  by  paying  a  price 
for  each  proportionate  to  the  excess  of  its  value  over 
that  of  the  crude  effort  which  is  all  that  the  labourer 
would  have  troubled  himself  to  put  on  the  market 
otherwise.  Such,  then,  is  the  primary,  though  it  is  not 
the  entire,  explanation  of  that  increase  which  has,  under 
the  modern  industrial  oligarchy,  taken  place  in  the 
earnings  of  mere  manual  labour.  The  primary  cause 
of  this  increase  has  not  been  the  generosity  of  the 
employers,  nor  the  pressure  of  collective  bargaining. 
Its  primary  cause  has  been  the  fact  that,  the  action  of 
the  oligarchy  being  first  assumed  as  an  essential,  various 
new  efficiencies — we  may  call  them  kinds  of  super-labour 
— in  response  to  the  demands  of  the  oligarchy  have  been 
developed  by  the  labourers  themselves. 

Here,  then,  in  these  three  productive  classes— the 
oligarchy  of  employers  whose  business  is  mental  direc- 
tion, the  great  subordinate  staff  whose  business  is  mental 
direction  in  obedience  to  the  employers'  orders,  and  the 
manual  workers  through  whom  Mind  is  brought  into 

^  Many  persons  deny  this.  Those  who  do  so  have  mainly  in  view 
kinds  of  manual  work  which  are  of  the  nature  of  artistry.  And  it  is 
true  that  the  role  of  the  artist,  as  a  direct  fashioner  of  goods  that  come 
into  the  market,  has,  under  the  modern  system  of  production,  become 
relatively  less  important  than  it  once  was.  It  is,  however,  not  extinct. 
It  flourishes  under  limitations  of  a  very  obvious  kind,  with  which  senti- 
mental democrats  least  of  all  people  should  quarrel.  In  proportion 
as  goods  are  fashioned  by  the  direct  labour  of  artists,  each  of  whom 
possesses  some  special  genius,  the  supply  of  such  goods  is  necessarily 
slow  and  small.  Tliey  can,  therefore,  be  acquired  by  the  few  only, 
and  these  few  are  the  exceptionally  rich  ;  but  unless  artists  work  under 
scientific  employers  who  can  use  their  designs  as  patterns,  wealth,  as 
represented  by  art-products,  can  never  diffuse  itself  outside  a  narrow 
circle. 


THREE   PRODUCTIVE   CLASSES     173 

contact  with  matter,  we  have  the  three  main  agencies, 
to  the  interaction  of  which,  not  only  the  increase  of 
wealth  is  due,  but  the  general  features  of  its  distribution 
also.  We  have  these  classes  and  their  respective  func- 
tions before  us,  not  as  mere  abstract  quantities,  but  as 
localised  and  concrete  facts,  the  development  of  which, 
in  the  case  of  one  country  at  all  events,  is  historically 
and  statistically  measurable  with  some  rough  but  suf- 
ficient accuracy ;  and  with  the  aid  of  such  concrete  facts 
we  can  more  or  less  definitely  see  how  the  scheme  of 
distribution,  which  to-day  is  substantially  the  same 
everywhere,  substantially  reflects  and  coincides  with  the 
actual  dynamics  of  production. 

In  the  following  chapter  we  will  consider  these  facts 
again,  with  reference  to  the  more  recent  attempts  of 
socialist  or  democratic  thinkers  to  exhibit  some  vast 
change  in  the  present  distribution  of  wealth  and  circum- 
stance as  possible  through  a  fuller  operation  of  the  forces 
of  pure  democracy. 


OLIGARCHY   IN  ACTION 


175 


CHAPTER  IV 


DISTRIBUTION  AS   IT   IS 


Let  us  sum  up  briefly  the  argument  of  the  foregoing 
chapter  with  regard  to  modern  production  and  the 
process  of  distribution  as  contingent  on  it,  in  a  country 
which  is  the  classical  type  of  the  progressive  countries 
of  the  world. 

In  the  course  of  little  more  than  a  century  the  modern 
industrial  system  has  not  only  provided  occupation  and 
the  means  of  livelihood  for  a  population  five  times  as 
great  as  that  which  could  otherwise  have  maintained 
itself  within  the  limits  of  the  British  Islands,  but  it  also 
has  more  than  doubled  the  average  product  per  in- 
habitant. This  result  is  primarily  due  to  the  fact  that 
intellects  of  a  superior  order  have  concentrated  their 
powers  on  the  business  of  directing  manual  labour ;  and, 
since  manual  labour  was,  at  the  beginning  of  the 
twentieth  century,  not  superior,  either  in  muscular  force 
or  skill,  to  what  it  had  been  at  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth,  or  indeed  to  what  it  had  been  in  ancient 
Rome  or  Egypt,  the  whole  of  the  increment  which  is 
new  since  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  must, 
in  a  primary  sense,  be  the  product  of  Mind  alone,  as 
embodied  in  the  persons  of  those  by  whom  labour  is  now 
directed.  Such,  then,  in  a  primary  sense,  being  the 
principle  of  production  to  which  the  modern  increment 
is  due,  it  was  pointed  out  that  this  principle,  when 
translated  into  actual  practice,  has  resulted  in  a  scheme 
of  distribution  which,  within  something  like  a  tenth  of 
the  total,  tends  so  far  to  accord  with  the  minutiae  of  the 
productive  process  that  what  a  man  or  a  class  receives 
is  a  roughly  accurate  index  of  what  he  or  it  produces. 
We  have  seen,  however,  that,  if  this  measure  of  indi- 
vidual production  be  adopted,  the  practical  result  differs 

174 


to  a  vast  degree  from  anything  which  our  general  theory, 
if  taken  without  qualifications,  might  reasonably  lead 
us  to  expect.  We  have  seen  that  out  of  an  increment 
of  1050  million  pounds  the  representatives  of  controlling 
Mind  received  as  an  actual  fact  something  less  than  a 
quarter.  Hence,  if  it  is  true  in  any  sense  that  Mind 
produced  the  whole,  it  must  be  true  in  some  other  sense 
that  its  product  was  a  quarter  only,  whilst  Subordinate 
Mind  and  Labour  between  them  produced  the  rest.  If, 
therefore,  our  discussion  is  to  have  any  practical  mean- 
ing, we  must  consider  more  closely  how,  in  any  sense 
that  is  practical,  these  two  propositions  are  related  to 
one  another,  or  whether  the  former,  which  credits  the 
Mind  of  the  oligarchy  with  having  produced  the  whole, 
has  in  actual  life  any  meaning  whatever. 

In  order  to  understand  this  question  it  is  necessary 
to  revert  to  a  discussion  which  occupied  us  in  a  previous 
chapter,  with  regard  to  the  nature  of  practical  reasoning 
generally.  It  was  there  pointed  out  that  all  practical 
reasoning  is  in  its  nature  hypothetical,  resolving  itself 
into  a  statement  that,  if  such  and  such  a  particular  thing 
be  done,  such  and  such  a  result  will  be  thereby  caused 
or  produced.  It  was  pointed  out  further  that,  if  such 
reasoning  is  to  have  any  immediate  import,  the  action 
which  is  the  subject  of  the  hypothesis  must  be  of  a  kind 
which  it  is  likely  or  reasonably  possible  that  an  indi- 
vidual or  a  class  may,  under  existing  circumstances, 
elect  to  perform,  having  not  performed  it  previously,  or, 
having  performed  it  previously,  may  elect  to  perform  no 
longer.  Thus,  if  manual  labour,  by  availing  itself  of  the 
new  opportunities  which,  as  we  have  seen,  have  been 
created  for  it  by  the  Mind  of  an  industrial  oligarchy,  can 
be  said  to  produce  more  to-day  than  it  did  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  nineteenth  century,  or  indeed  to  play  any 
part  in  the  production  of  the  increment  whatsoever — 
especially  if  it  can  be  said  in  any  serious  sense  to  produce 
more  of  the  increment  than  is  produced  by  the  Mind 
of  the  oligarchy  or  as  much — one  condition  must  first 
be  taken  for  granted.  This  condition  is  that  the  existing 
system  of  production,  with  an  industrial  oligarchy  at  the 
head  of  it,  is  established  as  a  going  concern,  and  that  no 
question  of  what  would  happen  if  the  action  of  the 


176    LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

oligarchy  were  suspended  presents  itself  as  relating  to 
possibilities  which  are  near  enough  to  be  worth  con- 
sidering ;  whereas  if  this  condition  disappears,  the  whole 
situation  changes. 

Thus,  for  example,  when  the  Jesuits  were  a  power  in 
Paraguay,  they  selected  certain  of  the  more  intelligent 
natives,  and  succeeded  in  teaching  them  the  delicate  art 
of  watch-making.     By  these  natives,  though  experts  in 
arts  immemorially  their  own,  such  a  use  of  the  human 
hand  had  never  before  been  dreamed  of.     In  response  to 
the  demands,   and  under  the  supervision  of  their  in- 
structors,  they  nevertheless  acquired   it.     Under   such 
conditions  the  industry  so  far  prospered  that  the  Jesuits 
are  said  to  have  made  a  considerable  profit  from  the 
products  of  it,  these  being  sold  in  Europe  for  the  benefit 
of  their  own  Order ;  and  whilst  this  situation  lasted,  the 
craftsmen,  who  profited  also,  may  be  said  to  have  done 
as  much  in  producing  the  total  output  as  the  men  who 
merely  set  them  their  lessons  and  told  them  what  to  do. 
But  when,  as  subsequently  happened,  the  Jesuits  were 
driven  from  the  country,  the  native  watch-makers,  de- 
prived of  their  guides,  were  helpless.     There  was  no 
longer  a  question  of  which  did  most  in  the  making  of 
this  new  merchandise — the  Mind  of  the  directors  or  the 
labour  of  the  men  directed.    There  was  for  the  labourers, 
as  soon  as  they  were  left  to  themselves,  no  merchandise 
of  this  new  kind  at  all ;  and  the  proposition  that  the 
directors  had  produced  the  whole  of  it — a  proposition 
which  would  otherwise  have  been  true  in  an  abstract,  a 
remote,  and  a  speculative  sense  only — would  then  have 
represented   for   the   natives   a   highly   important   and 
directly  experienced  fact. 

This  illustration  is  taken  from  a  chapter  of  history 
very  unusual  in  kind,  but  it  turns  on  an  event  the  sub- 
stantial reproduction  of  which  on  an  incomparably 
wider  scale  is  not  only  not  impossible  if  we  take  it  as  a 
practical  hypothesis,  but  is  actually  the  precise  event 
which  the  theory  of  pure  democracy  indicates  as  the 
object  of  all  popular  endeavour,^  and  which  the  earlier 

1  A  most  remarkable  illustration  of  the  vital  pertinence  of  the  above 
passage  has  been  provided  by  the  course  of  the  Russian  revolution— an 
event  which  did  not  begin,  and  which   was  indeed  anticipated  by 


HIGH   WAGES   AND   OLIGARCHY     177 

leaders  of  democratic  opinion  were  urging  year  by  year 
all  labouring  men  to  work  for  by  strategical  strikes,  by 
violence,  or  the  capture  of  governmental  power.  The 
event  which  was  to  be  thus  worked  for  is  simply  the 
entire  cessation  of  any  kind  of  influence  which  is  exer- 
cised over  industrial  effort  by  the  knowledge,  the  in- 
tellect or  the  energy  of  any  purely  directive  class,  and 
the  "  emancipation  " — such  is  the  agitator's  favourite 
term — of  the  masses  of  the  workers  from  all  mental 
guidance  other  than  that  which  originates  in  their  own 
minds  only.  So  long  as  such  an  event  continues  to  be 
aimed  at  by  any  large  section  of  the  workers,  or  to  haunt 
their  minds  as  an  object  of  ideal  endeavour,  the  proposi- 
tion that  the  oligarchy,  which  such  persons  have  often 
attempted  and  may  again  attempt  to  destroy,  really 
produces  the  whole  of  the  new  wealth  of  the  world,  in 
the  sense  that  if  the  oligarchy  were  paralysed  this  new 

nobody,  till  more  than  a  year  after  the  words  in  the  text  were  written. 
Tiie  following  facts,  recorded  by  the  socialist  correspondent  of  an 
English  newspaper  at  Petrograd  (July  1917),  speak  for  themselves. 
M.  Skoboleff,  a  revolutionary  leader  himself,  declared  that  the  great 
danger  of  the  revolution  was  caused  by  the  masses,  whose  one  object 
was  "  to  terrorise  aiid  compel  the  dismissal  of  all  controlling  persons  of 
any  kind"  and  manage  industry  (as  Owen  and  Lane  attempted  to 
manage  it)  by  purely  democratic  committees,  which  had  no  power 
except  in  so  far  as  they  reflected  the  intelligence  and  the  immediate 
inclinations  of  the  wage-earners.  These  committees  (as  Owen  found, 
and  as  I^ne  found)  proved  absolutely  incompetent.  In  one  factory 
the  helplessness  of  the  committee  being  apparent  to  all,  the  experi- 
ment was  attempted  of  turning  the  foremen  into  so  many  petty 
dictators.  The  foremen  proved  as  helpless  as  the  committee.  The 
workers  were  accordingly  driven  to  come  for  guidance  to  the  old 
management.  In  a  dyeing  business  in  Petrograd  the  wage-earners  had 
demanded  wages  so  far  beyond  the  value  of  the  total  product  that  there 
was  no  revenue  out  of  which  to  pay  them.  ITiere  was,  however,  on  the 
premises  a  large  store  of  chemicals.  The  wage-earners  insisted  that 
these  should  be  sold,  and  wages  paid  out  of  the  sum  thus  obtained. 
These  chemicals  were  essentials  of  the  industry.  Nothing  could  be 
done  without  them.  ITie  works  accordingly  had  to  close  down.  The 
more  intelligent  revolutionists,  like  M.  Skoboletf,  may  denounce  such 
insane  proceedings  '^  as  a  direct  menace  to  the  gains  achieved  by  the 
revolution,"  but  they  are  simply  the  logical  results  of  the  principles  of 
pure  democracy — which  principles  necessarily  mean,  if  they  mean  any- 
thing, *'the  dismissal  of  all  controlling  persons,"  or,  in  other  words, 
any  oligarchic  person  who  imposes  his  own  will^  or  the  results  of  his 
own  knowledge^  on  others. 


178     LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 

wealth  would  presently  exist  no  longer,  is  not  a  proposi- 
tion which  is  true  as  a  piece  of  mere  abstract  theory. 
It  is  one  which  is  fraught  with  a  meaning  as  momentous 
and  as  strictly  practical  as  any  social  politician,  or  any 

sane  man,  can  imagine.       .  ^         .      .  .  ^  ..^ 

Nevertheless,  let  it  be  said  again,  in  so  far  as  we  take, 
and  have  reason  to  take,  the  operation  of  the  oligarchy 
for  granted,  the  practical  truth  will  be  that  what  the 
oligarchy  produces  by  the  process  of  intellectual  direc- 
tion is  by  no  means  the  whole  of  the  increment,  but 
merely  a  small  fraction,  the  larger  part  being  the  pro- 
duct of  those  democratic  reactions— reactions  both 
manual  and  mental  which  the  action  of  the  oligarchy 
evokes,  and  alone  makes  possible,  but  without  which 
the  oligarchy  itself  would  in  all  industries  be  crippled, 
and  in  many  reduced  to  impotence. 

Here,   then,   in  the  operations  of  these  tl^y^e   great 
agencies-in  Supreme  or  Controlling  Mmd,  Subordinate 
Mind,  and  Labour,  the  interaction  of  which  is  the  essence 
of  the  modern  productive  system,  we  see  the  reason  why, 
in  all  progressive  countries,  the  resulting  scheme  of  dis- 
tribution,  elaborate   as   its  graduations  are,   is  almost 
indistinguishably  the  same,  and  w^y^Controlh^g  Mmd 
should,  in  spite  of  its  primacy,  get  out  of  the  total  pro- 
duct such  a  relatively  small  reward.     The  reason  lies 
firstly  in  the  fact  that  the  modern  productive  process 
depends  on  the  interaction  of  units  who  differ  greatly  in 
respect  of  their  unitary  productive  powers ;  secondly,  in 
the  fact  that  the  distribution  of  the  product  everywhere 
tends  to  adjust  itself  to  what  each  unit  produces ;  and, 
thirdly,    in   the  fact  that  these  various  powers  them- 
selves are  everywhere  distributed  by  nature  m  very  much 
the  same  proportions.     The  international  similarities  of 
distribution  are  explicable  m  no  other  way.     T»iere;^^^ 
indeed,  in  all  highly  civilised  countries  such  as  the  IJnited 
Kingdom  and  America,  about  a  tenth  part  of  the  total 
fnnual  product  which,  like  a  kind  of  precipitate,  goes  to 
its  recipients  as  income  from  inherited  capital ;   and, 
even  if  this  fact  is  ignored,  it  cannot  be  Pretended,  as  to 
the  rest,  that  the  adjustment  is  as  yet  ^n  individual  cases 
complete.     It  is  enough  to  say  ^^^^  .^^^^^^^^ustm^^^^^^^^ 
resemble  those  of  coats  to  individual  human  figures. 


CURRENT  REWARDS  OF  EFFORT  179 

The  coats  adjust  themselves  generally  to  the  dimensions 
of  their  respective  wearers,  though  in  many  eases  the  fit 
may  not  be  perfect. 

Now,  if  such  allowances  be  made  for  maladjustments 
of  this  kind,  the  general  adjustment  of  income  to  the 
product  of  individual  effort  is  gradually  being  admitted 
by  socialist  thinkers  themselves.  It  is  being  admitted 
by  them  partly  in  the  way  of  revised  theory,  partly  in 
the  way  of  a  series  of  revised  statistics.  Thus,  the 
"  enormous  share  "  stolen  from  the  products  of  the 
workers  by  an  absolutely  non-productive  class  was, 
according  to  Marx  and  his  immediate  followers,  some- 
thing between  80  and  75  per  cent,  of  the  total.  Twenty 
or  thirty  years  later,  the  strike-leaders  of  Australia  had 
reduced  this  estimate  of  the  stolen  share  to  66  per  cent. 
Ten  years  later,  again,  the  more  educated  of  the  English 
socialists  had  reduced  it  to  33,  and  others,  later  still, 
have  reduced  it  to  25. 

These  changes  are  reflections,  not  only  of  an  improved 
arithmetic,  but  also  of  an  advance  in  thought  from  the 
crude  puerilities  of  Marx,  by  which  the  earlier  socialists 
were  dominated,  to  something  more  closely  resembling 
the  complexities  of  actual  fact.  The  Marxian  ideas  of 
distribution  in  the  modern  world  were  perfectly  logical 
as  related  to  the  Marxian  theory  of  production;  but, 
despite  the  talent  displayed  by  Marx  in  his  exposition 
of  it,  his  theory  of  production  is,  as  applied  to  the 
modern  world,  one  for  which  the  word  "  puerile  "  is  the 
only  correct  epithet.  Modern  economic  society  is,  ac- 
cording to  that  theory,  divided  into  two,  and  no  more 
than  two  classes — a  mass  of  employers  on  the  one  hand, 
whose  sole  activity  is  theft,  and  who  hardly  know  the 
nature  of  the  industries  of  which,  as  Mill  said,  *'  they  are 
the  possessors,"  and  a  mass  of  labourers,  exclusively 
manual,  on  the  other,  who  are  all  of  the  same  grade, 
who  all  receive  or  tend  to  receive  the  same  starvation 
wages,  and  who,  unaided  by  any  intellect  or  any  ima- 
gination but  their  own,  produce  all  the  wealth  of  the 
modern  world  between  them. 

If  such  a  picture  were  correct,  the  Marxian  estimate 
of  the  stolen  or  unearned  share  would  doubtless  be 
correct   also.     It   stands   or   falls,   however,    with  two 


i! 


I! 


180    LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

definite  assumptions  :  firstly,  that  the  labourers  are  all 
of  the  same  grade,  and  all  receive  the  same  mmimum 
wage ;  and,  secondly,  that  neither  the  employers  nor  any 
intermediate  class  have  anything  to  do  with  the  opera- 
tions of  labour  whatever,  whether  as  masters  of  science, 
as  men  of  enterprise,  or  as  organisers,  or  in  any  other 
wav.     Each  of  these  assumptions  has  come  to  be  recog- 
nised by  the  later  socialists  as  absurd.     They  recognise, 
on  the   one   hand,   that   wages   do   not   all  .tend   to   a 
minimum,  but  rise  for  the  most  part  m  varying  degrees 
above  it,  the  aggregate  share  of  the  wage-earners  m  the 
SnalVroduct  bfing  thus  indefinitely  larger  than  the 
fifth    part    or   the    quarter    which    the    logic    of   Marx 
assigned  to  them.     They  recognise    on  the  other  ^^^ 
that  the  modern  employers,  as  distinct  from  the  mere 
investors,  are,  instead  of  mere  idle  "  expropriators,'   the 
most  active  Agents  in  production  th^^  ^^^  ^^  ^^^^^^ 
known  to  history.     One  modern  socialist  writer,  who  has 
alreldy  been  quoted  here,  admits  that  they  owe  their 
posTtkfns  to  the  fact  that  they  are  born  ^^^^^ .  certain 
peculiar  energies  of  which  they  are  the  practical  mono- 
Sts;  that  their  function  consists  in  the  issumg  of 
technical  orders  to  which  the  mass  must  conform  in  a 
sDirit  of  "  strict   subordination  and   discipline     ,  that 
these  men  are  producers  as  truly  as  the  labourers  them- 
selves;  that  a  large  share  of  tlie  income  of    /  complex 
industrial  state  "  is  produced  by  t^^^^'  ^^.^  .^^f^^^^ 
share   must   be   regarded   as  the   rent   of  |heir   special 
ability.    Other  representative  socialists,  English,  Belgian, 
German,  Italian  and  American,  have  come  to  admit  in 
almost  the  same  words  that  the  special  abilities  of  men 
who   were   classed   by   Marx   as  idlers   "  make   aU  the 
difference  to  a  business  between  success  and  ruin. 

In  proportion,  then,  as  socialists  have  come  to  per- 
ceive  on  the  one  hand  that  wages  are  greater  in  the 
aggregate  than  according  to  Marx  they  could  be,  and 
on  the  other  that  employers  produce  a  large  part  of  the 
income  which  according  to  Marx  they  steal  it  is  obvious 
that  the  socialist  estimate  of  the  stolen  total  has  as 
compared  with  the  Marxian,  been  necessarily  reduced 
tTTi  modest  proportions.  The  latest  socialis  esti- 
mates have,  as  was  just  now  mentioned,  reduced  it  from 


TRUSTS  AND   WAGES 


181 


80  per  cent,  of  the  entire  product  to  25 ;  and,  if  we  allow 
for  the  fact  that  at  any  given  time  about  half  of  the 
income  directly  coming  from  property  is  from  property 
created  by  the  actual  recipients  themselves,  the  income 
really  unearned,  according  to  this  computation,  will, 
though  somewhat  excessive,  be  not  far  from  the  truth. 
Nor  does  this  more  reasonable  view  of  the  actualities 
of  the  existing  situation  lead  to  a  revised  conception  of 
unearned  income  alone.  It  leads  to  a  revised  conception 
of  the  causes  which  mainly  determine  the  distribution 
of  incomes  generally.  In  proportion  as  socialists  have 
now  come  to  perceive  that  if,  in  respect  of  incomes 
derived  from  inherited  property  (which  alone  are  really 
unearned),  allowance  be  made  to  the  extent  of  a  tenth 
or  even  a  twelfth  of  the  total  income  of  a  typical  modern 
nation,  the  entire  remainder  is  the  product  of  the  efforts 
of  living  men — in  proportion  as  they  have  come  to  per- 
ceive further  that  these  efforts,  instead  of  being,  as  Marx 
assumed,  equal,  rise  from  the  bottom  to  the  top  in  a 
minutely  graduated  scale ;  that  distribution  is  graduated 
in  a  manner  no  less  elaborate,  and  that  in  different  and 
distant  countries  this  distributive  graduation  exhibits 
the  same  contour  or  pattern — one  thing  has,  generally 
if  not  in  exact  detail,  become  as  plain  to  socialists  as  it 
must  be  to  other  men.  It  has  become  plain  to  them 
that  this  uniform  graduation  of  incomes  cannot  be 
accounted  for  on  the  supposition  that  millions  of 
workers,  all  of  them  equal  in  efficiency,  are  robbed  of 
their  equal  products  to  systematically  unequal  degrees, 
but  that  primarily  and  mainly  their  shares  of  the  total 
product  must,  with  substantial  accuracy,  be  adjusted 
to  the  unequal   amounts  which  their  efforts  severally 

produce. 

This  profound  change,  however,  in  the  trend  of  socialist 
thought  has  not  been  due  to  a  development  of  thought 
alone.  It  has  been  due  largely  to  two  kinds  of  experi- 
ence. One  of  these  has  been  the  growth  since  the  days 
of  Marx  of  State-owned  or  Municipal  undertakings,  such 
as  railways,  gas-works,  electric  lighting  and  telephones. 
The  other  has  been  the  growth  of  the  great  Trusts  of 

America. 
According  to  the  implications  of  earlier  socialist  argu- 


i 


i 


HI 


ii 


182     LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

ment,  and  according  to  the  dream  of  all  the  earlier 
socialists,  as  soon  as  any  industry  had  passed  into  the 
hands  of  the  State,  "the  people  "—that  is,  the  em- 
ployees— would  enjoy,  somehow  or  other,  a  vague  some- 
thing called  "economic  freedom";  that  they  would 
divide  in  equal  shares  the  entire  proceeds  amongst  them- 
selves; that  they  would  settle  for  themselves,  without 
any  dictation  from  above,  what  their  several  tasks 
should  be ;  and  the  State,  as  holder  of  the  capital,  would 
be  no  more  than  their  banker.  Since  the  days  of  Marx 
every  one  of  these  expectations  has  been  falsified.  It 
has  been  found  that  in  State-owned  industries  the 
general  conditions  of  employment  are  in  no  essential 
feature  different  from  those  that  prevail  under  private 
companies.  The  same  discipline  from  above,  as  a 
matter,  not  of  choice,  but  of  necessity,  reappears  in  yet 
stricter  forms.  Wages  are  graduated  in  substantially 
the  same  way,  being  adjusted  to  the  value  of  work  with 
the  same  fatal  precision.  Equality  of  income  and  free- 
dom are  as  far  off  as  ever.  All  this  is  admitted  by  the 
serious  socialists  of  to-day.  Experience  has  shown,  says 
one  of  them,  who  once  was  an  ardent  Marxian,  that  a 
State-owned  industry,  such  as  the  Post-Office  (which 
Marx  adduces  as  a  specimen  of  ideal  socialism  in  action), 
is  merely  private  capitalism  rehabilitated  under  a  new 

name. 

Since  the  days  of  Marx  the  world-famous  Trusts  of 
America  have,  by  the  facts  of  experience,  been  teaching 
socialists  precisely  the  same  lesson.  The  growth  of  these 
huge  corporations  from  the  closing  decade  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  onwards,  each  of  which  is  a  combination 
of  countless  businesses  into  one,  has  affected  the  socialist 
imagination,  and,  through  it,  socialist  theory,  in  a 
manner  yet  more  remarkable.  It  has  done  so  in  two 
ways.  On  the  one  hand,  to  a  degree  much  greater  than 
any  of  the  industries  which  have  thus  far  been  owned 
and  monopolised  by  the  State,  these  corporations  have 
shown  how  efficient  as  instruments  of  production  groups 
of  industries  may  be  rendered  by  uniting  them  under 
one  control,  and  have  thus  provided  socialists  with  the 
spectacle  of  a  feat  accomplished  which,  if  only  carried 
to  its  full  logical  consequences,  would  realise  their  idea 


TRUSTS   AND   OLIGARCHY 


183 


of  what  socialism,  as  a  productive  scheme,  would  be. 
On  the  other  hand,  nowhere  else  has  the  principle  of 
industrial  oligarchy  been  developed  to  so  extreme  an 
extent.  Nowhere  else  are  the  graded  efficiencies  of  the 
mass  so  conspicuously  signalised  by  a  scale  of  unequal 
wages.  Nowhere  else  is  the  contrast  greater  and  more 
obtrusive  between  the  fortunes  of  the  directed  many  and 
those  of  the  directing  few  on  whose  constant  vigilance 
the  vitality  of  these  mammoth  enterprises  depends. 

This  latter  aspect  of  the  question  modern  socialists 
recognise  no  less  clearly  than  the  former.  State-owned 
industries  and  Trusts,  more  especially  the  latter,  repre- 
sent the  productive  system  which  socialism  necessarily 
demands  ;  and  yet  these  very  persons,  who  lead  and 
reflect  the  movement  of  socialist  thought  to-day,  admit 
that  both  such  systems  are,  if  taken  by  themselves, 
utterly  subversive  of  the  object  at  which  any  kind  of 
socialism  aims.  "  Let  us,"  they  say  in  effect,  "organise 
men  in  whatever  way  we  please,  so  long  as  it  will  render 
their  corporate  industry  effective;  let  us  pay  them  as 
nearly  as  possible  the  full  value  of  their  individual  work ; 
and  the  very  features  against  which  the  idea  of  socialism 
is  a  protest  will  reappear  as  they  are  under  the  system 
existing  here  and  now." 

An  admission  of  this  kind  by  the  leaders  of  socialist 
thought  might  at  first  sight  seem  to  be  nothing  less  than 
a  relinquishment  of  every  idea  by  which  socialism  has 
thus  far  been  actuated.  Such,  however,  is  not  the  case. 
So  far  as  socialism  has  for  its  ultimate  object  a  general 
equality  of  material  conditions  or  incomes,  the  admis- 
sion in  question  is  merely  a  prelude  to  the  revival  of  the 
old  promise  in  a  yet  more  alluring  form.  What  the 
change  in  theory  is  which  has  made  this  revival  possible 
may  be  gathered  from  the  number  of  new  tentative 
formulae  which  have,  to  speak  roughly,  since  the  close 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  crept  into  the  language  of 
socialist  thinkers  generally.  They  differ  as  much  in 
their  implications  from  the  theories  of  a  productive 
monism,  which  aimed  at  merging  the  industrial  oli- 
garchy in  the  mass,  and  which  have  already  been 
examined  here,  as  they  do  from  the  theory  of  Marx,  in 
which  there  is  no  recognition  of  the  functions  of  oli- 


[(i 


184     LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

garchy  at  all.  These  new  formulae  have  now  become 
so  familiar  that  the  following  examples  of  the  ways  in 
which  they  are  worded  will  suffice.  "  It  is  a  mistake 
to  suppose,"  says  one  writer,  "  that  socialism  is 
identified  with  any  one  theory  of  economic  production. 
It  relates  to  something  wider  than  the  act  of  produc- 
tion, and  beyond  it."  "  A  system  of  production,"  says 
another,  "  is  socialist  or  non-socialist,  not  according  to 
the  manner  in  which  wealth  is  produced,  but  according 
to  the  social  uses  to  which  it  is  put  afterwards." 
"  Socialism,"  says  another,  "  does  not  necessarily  mean, 
and  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  cannot  mean,  that  everything 
is  to  be  done  by  the  people.  Its  sole  essential  meaning 
is  that  everything  is  to  be  done  for  the  people."  Con- 
densed statements  such  as  these,  from  the  nature  of  the 
case,  are  informative  in  the  way  of  implication  only. 
What,  then,  when  stated  in  fuller  and  more  precise 
terms,  does  the  implication  mean  which  emanates  like 
a  scent  from  all  of  them  ?  What  new  principle  do  they 
indicate,  by  the  practical  application  of  which  all  the 
inequalities  incident  to  an  oligarchic  system  of  pro- 
duction shall  have  for  their  final  issue  a  paradise  of 
democratic  equality  ? 

This  question  was  asked  with  incisive  candour,  and 
the  modern  socialist  answer  to  it  was  indicted  no  less 
clearly,  in  a  sort  of  manifesto  published  in  the  year  1907 
by  a  clerical  exponent  of  socialist  thought  in  America. 
There  are  traces  in  his  language  of  a  temper  peculiar 
to  churchmen  only,  but  his  main  argument  was  wholly 
independent  of  religion.  It  was  merely  a  logical  ex- 
pression of  the  ruling  idea  now  common  to  intellectual 
socialists  generally.  The  democrats  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  and  the  Marxian  socialists  of  the  nineteenth, 
both,  said  this  writer,  made  an  error,  and  the  same 
error,  at  starting;  not,  indeed,  as  to  the  object  of  the 
democratic  movement,  but  as  to  the  means  required 
for  its  accomplishment ;  and  nowhere,  so  he  proceeded, 
is  this  fact  more  clearly  shown  than  in  the  great  Charter 
of  Democracy  on  which  the  American  Constitution  rests. 
The  ideal  State  was  there  declared  to  be  one  in  which 
each  man  would  be  free  to  do  his  best  for  himself  by  the 
use  of  his  own  faculties,  so  far  as  this  course  was  com- 


1 


SENTIMENTAL  DISTRIBUTION      185 

patible  with  a  like  freedom  for  others.  Now,  a  State 
thus  constituted  would  work,  he  said,  well  enough  if  it 
were  not  for  one  fact,  and  this  fact  the  fathers  of  the 
American  Constitution  overlooked.  They  assumed  that 
the  faculties  of  all  men  were,  not  perhaps  precisely,  but 
at  all  events  very  fairly,  equal.  This,  however,  he  went 
on  to  observe,  is  just  what  men's  faculties  are  not ;  and, 
in  respect  of  no  faculties,  the  use  of  which  is  generally 
necessary,  do  men  differ  more  conspicuously  than  in  the 
intellect  and  energy  necessary  for  the  production  of 
wealth.  Hence  a  government  which  aims  merely  at 
providing  them  with  equal  opportunities  of  producing 
as  much  as  they  can,  and  keeping  as  much  as  they 
produce,  is  a  hotbed  of  those  ultimate  inequalities  which 
democracy  aims  at  minimising.  The  few  who  are 
endowed  with  faculties  of  one  special  order — faculties 
ethically  void  and  often  allied  with  baseness — are  left 
untrammelled  to  accumulate  wealth  and  power,  whilst 
the  many  are  left  unaided  in  absolute  or  comparative 
poverty.  Hence  the  earlier  democrats,  and  more  par- 
ticularly the  earlier  socialists,  though  right  in  their 
estimate  of  the  evils  by  which  society  is  at  present 
afflicted,  were  radically  wrong  as  to  their  cause.  The 
cause  of  existing  inequalities  does  not  lie  in  the  fact  that 
most  men,  under  the  existing  system,  do  not  get  all  that 
they  produce.  It  lies  in  the  fact  that  on  the  whole  this 
is  precisely  what  they  do  get.  They  get  what  is  due  to 
them  as  producers.  What  justice  demands,  what  demo- 
cracy demands,  what  socialism  demands,  is  that  they 
shall  get  what  is  due  to  them,  not  as  producers,  but  as 
men. 

In  other  words,  according  to  this  argument,  a  just 
distribution  of  material  goods  and  circumstances  has 
nothing  to  do  with  what  happens  within  the  precincts 
of  production  itself.  Within  those  precincts  the  prin- 
ciple of  oligarchy  may  preponderate.  Some  men  may 
cast  much  into  the  treasury,  others  relatively  little. 
Justice  relates  to  what  happens  outside  the  factory 
gates,  and  demands  that  when  the  treasury  is  opened 
the  last  shall  be  as  the  first,  the  first  no  greater  than 
the  last.  Thus,  with  one  of  those  touches  of  nature 
which  make  the  whole  world  kin,  the  writer  illustrates 


■■»  iWI-U       n 


186    LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

his  meaning  from  what  probably  was  his  own  experi- 
ence. He  complains  of  the  shameful  fact  that,  under 
the  existing  system,  a  minister  of  Christ,  if  he  wants  to 
build  a  church,  may  have  to  come  hat  in  hand  to  some 
coarse-grained  individual  whose  one  and  only  superiority 
is  a  wholly  non-moral,  a  wholly  non-Christian  power  of 
producing  the  dollars  which  the  Christian  desires  to 
spend.  Under  a  system  of  socialist  or  truly  democratic 
justice,  what  the  Christian  now  begs  as  a  favour— here 
is  the  writer's  conclusion — he  would  be  entitled  to 
demand  as  a  right. 

In   this  train   of  reasoning,   apart   from   its   clerical 
applications,  we  see  what  the  theory  of  wealth  and  dis- 
tribution is  to  which  socialist  and  democratic  thinkers 
are  now  generally  approximating.     In  this  theory  they 
find  what,  ever  since  they  detected  the  fallacy  of  the 
Marxian  doctrine  that  the  value  of  the  product  of  every 
worker  is  equal,  they  have  all  been  looking  for  in  one 
place  after  another.     They  find  a  means  by  which  two 
things,   seemingly   incompatible,    may   be   harmonised, 
both  of  which  are  essential  to  socialism  in  virtually  the 
same  degree ;  one  of  them  being  a  system  of  production 
from  which  oligarchy,  subordination  and  all  kinds  of 
inequality  are  inseparable ;  the  other  being  a  system  of 
distribution  which  shall  nevertheless  be  equal.     Nor  is 
this  the  only  advantage  which  the  new  conception  of 
the  socialist  principle  brings  them.     By  its  means  their 
estimate  of  "  the  enormous  share  recoverable  by  the 
people  themselves  "  is  restored  to  its  old  proportions, 
if  not,  indeed,  swollen  beyond  them ;  for  what  the  masses 
are  promised  by  a  polity  which  ignores  the  facts  of  pro- 
duction is  not  merely  that  limited  sum  which  at  present 
certain  persons  enjoy  in  excess  of  their  actual  products. 
Everybody  who  produces,  and  can  only  produce,  a  little, 
is  promised  nearly  all  the  products  of  those  who  possess 

more.  . 

How  such  a  scheme  of  socialism  would  work  out  in 
practice  is  a  question  which  shall  be  dealt  with  when  we 
have  seen  in  greater  detail  what  its  operation  would  be 
as  anticipated  by  socialists  themselves.  Meanwhile,  it 
will  be  enough  to  observe  that  if  the  essence  of  socialism 
is  to  be  found  in  the  process  of  democratic  distribution, 


SENTIMENTAL  DEMOCRACY        187 

and  if  this  is  not  to  be  determined  by  the  facts  of  indi- 
vidual production  at  all,  the  entire  conception  of  social- 
ism or  a  socialist  polity,  in  so  far  as  such  a  polity  is 
novel,  belongs  to  a  domain  of  life  which  is  not  industrial 
but  social ;  and  social  democracy,  not  industrial,  is  the 
democratic  element  which  is  involved  in  it. 

In  order  to  realise  this  fact  more  clearly  we  will 
presently  consider,  the  modern  socialist  programme  as 
set  forth  and  expounded  by  one  of  the  few  socialist 
writers  who  has  won  international  distinction  as  a  critic 
of  life  generally. 


J 


)k 


BOOK   IV 

DISTRIBUTION  BY  DEMOCRATIC  SENTIMENT 


CHAPTER   I 


THE    SENTIMENTAL   PROGRAMME 

What    is   meant    or   suggested    by   the    term    Social 
Democracy,  as  distinct  from  "  Political  "  and  "  Indus- 
trial," is  the  application  of  the  principle  of  "  one  man 
one  unit  of  influence  "  to  every  province  of  life  which 
is  distinguishable  from  that  of  technical  industry  on  the 
one  hand,  and  that  of  the  making  and  administration 
of  governmental  laws  on  the  other.     The  exclusion  of 
these  latter  activities  will  not,  indeed,  be  complete;  for 
if  principles  purely  moral  are,  as  modern  socialists  con- 
tend, to  determine  amongst  other  things  the  distribution 
of  material  products,  such  principles,  as  we  shall  see 
presently,   will   require   laws   to   enforce   them;   but  a 
development  of  these  principles  into  an  active  and  com- 
pelling power  must,  as  the  writer  about  to  be  quoted 
insists,  both  precede  such  laws  if  they  are  to  be  made, 
and  accompany  them  if  they  are  ever  to  be  effective ; 
and  the  nature  of  these  principles  themselves,  as  moral 
or  social  phenomena,  is  the  matter  with  which  we  are 

first  concerned.  «     «,  i 

The  writer  in  question  is  Mr.  G.  B.  Shaw,  whose 
peculiar  talents,  joined  with  his  socialist  sympathies, 
have  been  made  known  by  his  dramas  to  a  wide  and 
international  public.  These  dramas,  whatever  may  be 
their  merits  otherwise,  display  an  alertness  of  thought 
and  logic,  a  keen  observation  of  character,  and  an  insight 
into  social  relationships  and  the  current  ideas  involved 
in  them,  which  qualify  the  author  in  a  very  signal  degree, 

188 


THE   SOUL   OF   SOCIALISM 


189 


not  to  lead,  but  to  reflect  contemporary  socialist  thought, 
and  to  express  its  essential  content  in  the  most  coherent, 
the  most  logical,  and  generally  in  the  most  favourable 
form  of  which  it  is,  from  the  nature  of  things,  susceptible ; 
and  nowhere  can  a  better  or  more  representative  exposi- 
tion of  socialism  as  a  scheme  of  social,  to  the  exclusion 
of  industrial,  democracy  be  found  than  in  an  exposition 
of  it  which  was  given  by  Mr.  Shaw  as  a  challenge  to 
adverse  criticism,  on  an  occasion  designed  to  secure  for 
it  an  attention  as  wide  as  possible.  In  order,  then,  to 
understand  clearly  what  a  socialist  polity  would  be,  as 
advocated,  defended  and  understood  by  the  serious 
socialists  of  to-day,  Mr.  Shaw's  exposition  of  the  matter, 
as  given  by  him  on  that  occasion,  shall  in  substance  be 
reproduced  here.^ 

Mr.  Shaw  begins  by  saying  that  the  one  essential 
characteristic  by  which  a  socialist  State,  as  properly 
understood,  is  distinguished  from  all  others  has  been 
obscured  in  the  minds  of  its  opponents  because  they 
mistake  for  its  essence  what  is  merely  one  of  its  inci- 
dents. They  identify  it,  he  says,  with  a  mere  unification 
of  industries,  which  ought  always  to  be  distinguished 
from  socialism  by  the  name  of  "Industrial  Collectiv- 
ism." If  the  essence  of  socialism  be,  what  it  really  is — 
namely,  an  equal  distribution  of  incomes  or  material 
circumstance — collectivism,  says  Mr.  Shaw,  emphasising 
the  precise  illustration  which  has  just  now  been  men- 
tioned, would  in  itself  no  more  tend  to  produce  this  than 
the  great  Trusts  of  America.  But  socialism  beg'ins 
where  industrial  collectivism  ends.  Instead  of  leaving 
distribution  to  be  determined  by  the  facts  of  production, 
it  appears  on  the  stage  precisely  at  the  critical  moment, 

^  Mr.  Shaw's  views,  as  here  given,  were  expounded  by  him  at  great 
length  in  a  controversy  carried  on  by  himself  and  Mr.  Harold  Cox  in 
the  Mwning  Post  llie  nature  of  the  occasion  led  to  great  diffuse- 
ness  of  statement  on  his  part,  and  to  much  dislocation  of  the  logical 
order  of  his  arguments.  Their  true  logical  order  is,  however,  per- 
fectly clear  to  an  attentive  reader,  and  is  carefully  represented  in 
the  text.  Some  socialists  would  probably  say  that  Mr.  Shaw  presses 
the  demand  for  an  absolute  equality  of  incomes  too  far.  But  this  is  a 
mere  matter  of  detail,  and  does  not  affect  the  representative  character 
of  his  reasoning ;  for  a  virtual  or  effective  equality  is  demanded  by  them 
all  alike. 


190     LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 

and  imparts  to  collectivism  a  totally  new  character  by 
subjecting  the  distribution  of  its  products  to  a  force 
which  has  no  relation  to  industrial  facts  whatever.  This 
force,  he  says,  which  is  the  soul  of  sociahsm,  may  be 
best  described  as  a  sentiment,  of  which  the  nature  and 
the  genesis  are  as  follows.  The  sentiment,  he  says,  is 
one  which  will,  when  fully  developed,  render  the  very 
idea  of  unequal  incomes  intolerable;  and  although  at 
present  it  is  doubtless  far  from  general,  to  suppose  that 
it  will  soon  become  so  is  no  mere  idle  dream.  It  has  its 
roots  in  ordinary  human  nature.  A  sentiment  prevails 
already  amongst  all  civilised  men  which  demands  that 
the  beggar  shall  be  covered  with  clothes  of  some  kind, 
no  less  than  the  plutocrat.  Socialism,  then,  regarded 
as  a  practical  project,  does  not  require  for  its  basis 
the  creation  of  any  sentiment  that  is  new.  It  merely 
requires  a  development— and  this  is  in  rapid  progress— 
of  one  which  is  familiar  to  all  of  us,  as  operative  here 
and  now,  and  which  will,  when  developed  only  a  little 
further,  make  the  spectacle  of  a  poor  man  as  intolerable 
as  the  spectacle  of  a  naked  man.  Hence,  it  will  no 
longer  content  itself  with  demanding  a  coat  for  every- 
body. It  will  insist  on  filling  the  pockets  of  all  coats 
alike  with  what  Mr.  Shaw,  in  language  of  almost  needless 
precision,  calls  ^^the  quotient  of  the  national  income 
divided  by  the  number  of  the  population."  In  short, 
the  socialist  State,  as  expressing  the  sentiment  in  ques- 
tion, will,  Mr.  Shaw  proceeds,  say  to  every  one  of  its 
citizens,  "  We  guarantee  you  a  standard  income  from 
the  day  of  your  birth  to  the  day  of  your  death,  and 
whatever  else  we  allow  you  to  do,  we  will  not  allow  you 

to  be  poor."  ,,      c,         v     . 

We  must,  however,  remember,  Mr.  Shaw  hastens  on 
to  observe,  that  if  a  socialist  State  is  to  prosper,  the 
national  income  out  of  which  all  these  incomes  are  to 
come  must,  relatively  to  the  population,  be  certainly 
not  less  than  the  incomes  of  the  richer  countries  of  to- 
day; and  that  collectivism,  though  it  may  be  capable 
of  producing  an  ideally  adequate  maximum,  depends 
after  all  for  its  success  on  the  efforts  of  individual 
workers.  Hence,  income-producing  work  must  be  some- 
how exacted  from  everybody ;  and  socialism,  if  the  State 


INDUSTRIAL  COERCION 


191 


is  to  save  itself  from  "  national  bankruptcy,"  "  may  not 
dare  to  tolerate  a  single  idle  person." 

How,  then,  he  asks,  is  the  requisite  work  to  be 
secured  ?  Under  the  existing  system,  he  says,  the 
problem  is  self-solving;  for,  "  except  in  the  case  of  the 
few  who  are  men  of  property,"  a  man  who  will  not  work 
is  necessarily  condemning  himself  to  starve.  But  if 
socialism  guarantees  to  him  that,  whether  he  work  or 
no,  he  shall  live  in  equal  luxury  so  long  as  there  is  breath 
in  his  body,  the  old  stimulus  will  be  gone,  and  socialism 
must  supply  a  substitute.  And  this,  says  Mr.  Shaw,  is 
very  easily  found.  The  status  of  the  socialist  citizens 
as  income-producing  workers  must  be  assimilated  to 
that  of  soldiers  in  the  Prussian  army.  They  must  all 
be  subjected  to  a  quasi-military  discipline.  The 
sluggish,  the  insubordinate  and  even  the  truants  will, 
"  up  to  the  day  of  their  death,"  suffer  no  diminution 
of  income ;  but  the  slothful  will  have  a  touch  of  the  cane, 
the  insubordinate  will  have  a  touch  of  the  dog-whip,  and 
the  truants  will  be  treated  like  military  deserters  and 
shot. 

Now  here,  says  Mr.  Shaw,  anticipating  an  obvious 
criticism,  we  have  a  system  of  society  which  at  first 
sight  might  seem  to  be  one  of  slavery — a  system 
which  recalls  the  condition  of  the  Children  of  Israel  in 
Egypt,  with  the  melons  and  the  flesh-pots  in  front  of 
them  and  the  lash  of  the  taskmaster  behind.  Of  all 
the  apparent  difficulties  which  socialism  has  to  en- 
counter, this,  he  says,  is  the  most  important.  It  is, 
however,  apparent  only.  It  is  based,  he  says,  on  two 
misconceptions,  which  vanish  under  the  touch  of 
analysis. 

The  first  of  these  relates  to  industrial  work  generally. 
In  order  to  ensure  a  diligent  and  universal  performance 
of  it,  the  socialist  State  would  require  certain  punitive 
and  coercive  powers.  Let  this  be  at  once  granted.  But 
all  States — so  Mr.  Shaw  argues — are  bound  to  equip 
themselves  with  powers  of  a  like  kind,  as  precautions 
against  theft  and  murder.  This,  however,  does  not 
mean  that  the  mass  of  average  men  are  only  restrained 
from  larceny,  fraud  or  murder  by  dread  of  the  police- 
man's bludgeon,  of  the  cell,  or  of  the  hangman's  rope. 


192     LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

They  obey  the  law  spontaneously,  not  because  they  are 
slaves  but  because  they  are  free.  The  State  as  a 
punitive,  the  State  as  an  enslaving  power,  is  felt,  in 
practice,  by  none  but  a  perverse  minority.  In  the 
socialist  State  the  case  would  be  just  the  same.  As  soon 
as  industrial  work  was  transformed  into  a  legal  duty, 
the  majority  would  perform  it  freely  and  as  a  matter 
of  course,  just  as  they  now  obey  the  laws  which  prohibit 

murder.  ,         .  ^.         •       „^^ 

So  much  for  the  first  of  the  misconceptions  in  ques- 
tion.    The  second,  accordmg  to  Mr.   Shaw,  is  grosser 
and  more  unpardonable.     It  relates,  not  so  much  to  the 
amount  as  to  the  quality  of  the  work  required,  and  those 
who  give  voice  to  it  express  themselves  m  effect  thus : 
"  Industrial  work  is  of  various  kinds  and  grades,  and 
the  vice  or  absurdity  of  the  socialist  system  is  this :  it 
would  pay  for  all  qualities  at  exactly  the  same  rate. 
To  this  objection,  says  Mr.  Shaw,  which  can  only  be 
urged  by  the  "  base  "  or  the  blindly  foolish,  the  obvious 
answer  is  as  follows.     This  objection  assumes  that  work 
is  invariably  performed  for  payment.     No  fallacy  could 
be  more  absurd  than  this.     Work  in  general  is  usually, 
and  the  higher  kinds  of  work  are  always,  performed 
without  thought  of  a  reward  which  affects  to  represent 
their  value  in  terms  of  money  or  its  equivalents.    Indeea, 
says  Mr.  Shaw,  not  only  "  is  the  man  base  who  asks  to 
be  paid  for  doing  his  best  for  his  country,  but  the  man 
who  thinks  that  such  services  can  be  measured  m  com 
is  a  fool  "    "The  talents  which  are  precious  to  humanity 
and  build  up  great  States  have   (so  far  as  coin  goes) 
mostly  a  minus  value.     Indeed,  those  who  exercise  them 
are  fortunate  if  they  are  not  persecuted  as  well  as  un- 
paid."    Mr.  Shaw  illustrates  his  meaning  by  reference 
to  men  like  Socrates,  Paul,  Spinoza,  Leibnitz,  Newton 
and  others,  and  he  very  justly  contends  that  the  life- 
work  of  such  men  as  these  owes  all  its  value  to  the  fact 
that  it  was  performed  spontaneously,  and  not  for  the 
sake  of  any  income  or  ''coin"  commensurate  with  it. 
Who  can  doubt,  then,  he  asks,  that,  in  a  great  socialist 
politv,  which  starts  with  assuring  an  equal  and  ample 
Fncome  to  everybody,  most  of  the  industrial  workers 
and^specially  the  ablest  section  of  them,  will  eagerly 


COMPULSION   AND   EQUALITY      193 

do  their  utmost  in  contributing  to  the  total  stock, 
without  any  other  motive  than  the  desire  of  "  being 
precious  to  humanity,"  and  without  adjusting  their 
services  to  the  likelihoods  of  any  private  gain?  In 
socialism,  then,  as  a  scheme  of  equalised  incomes,  despite 
the  draconian  powers  which  the  State  would  have  in 
reserve  for  the  purpose  of  extorting  work  from  a  certain 
debased  minority,  there  is  nothing  which  conflicts  with 
the  freedom  of  any  reasonable  and  decent  man. 

Mr.  Shaw's  picture,  however,  is  not  yet  complete.  A 
brilliant  finishing  touch  still  remains  to  be  added  to  it. 
Industry,  says  Mr.  Shaw,  when  organised  under  one 
directorate,  will  run  with  such  perfect  smoothness  and 
so  slight  a  waste  of  effort  that  the  hours  of  daily  work 
requisite  for  the  production  of  an  adequate  national 
income  will  probably  sink  to  five,  and  at  all  events  to 
not  more  than  six.  Thus  the  socialist  State  will  be  a 
paradise,  not  only  of  general  affluence,  and  of  the  happy 
freedom  which  comes  when  work,  in  any  case  necessary, 
is  performed  with  a  willingness  which  anticipates  and 
outruns  compulsion ;  but  it  will,  as  Mr.  Shaw  depicts  it, 
be  a  paradise  of  leisure  also.  In  such  a  State  Humanity 
will  at  last  come  into  its  own. 

Now,  the  whole  of  this  argument  in  a  certain  sense 
hangs  together,  and  may  be  taken  as  representing,  in  a 
signally  favourable  way,  the  amount  of  cohesion  that 
exists  in  socialist  thought  generally.  Moreover,  up  to 
a  certain  point  it  is  not  only  consistent  with  itself,  but 
is  also  in  sober  relation  to  fairly  definite  facts.  In  the 
first  place  it  is  quite  conceivable  that,  though  industrial 
collectivism  in  itself  would  have  no  tendency  to  result 
in  an  equal  distribution  of  incomes,  a  sentiment  so 
strongly  in  favour  of  such  a  distribution  might  develop 
itself  that  the  forces  of  law  would  be  utilised  with  some 
success  to  secure  it.  It  is  also  conceivable  that,  as 
happened  in  the  days  of  Sesostris,  arduous  labour  might 
be  extorted  from  multitudes  by  mere  compulsion,  though 
all  direct  connection  between  work  and  income  were 
eliminated.  Nobody  will  quarrel  with  Mr.  Shaw's  argu- 
ment thus  far.  Everybody  will  agree  with  him  when 
he  admits  that,  if  industry  in  a  socialist  State  would 
wholly,  or  even  mainly,  have  mere  compulsion  as  its 


194    LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

basis,  socialism  would  be  rightly  repudiated  as  a 
resuscitation  of  slavery. 

But  the  whole  of  his  argument  thus  far  is  simply  of 
the  nature  of  a  preamble.  His  argument  proper,  as  he 
himself  insists,  hangs  on  the  thesis  that,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  entire  work  demanded  by  the  socialist  State 
of  the  citizens  would  be,  by  the  vast  majority  of  them, 
performed  of  their  own  free  will,  coercion  for  them 
having  practically  no  existence ;  and  as  soon  as  he 
crosses  the  Rubicon,  and  comes  to  this  crucial  point,  his 
reasoning  acquires  a  totally  different  character.  Com- 
parative clearness  gives  place  to  a  confusion  which  is 
doubly  grotesque  because  he  does  not  himself  perceive 
it.  It  is  a  confusion  arising  not  so  much  from  an  error 
in  his  logic  as  from  a  confused  conception  of  the  things 
to  which  his  logic  is  applied.  It  is  a  confusion  which 
reflects  itself  in  his  use  of  the  ordinary  word  "  work." 

"  Work  "  is  a  word  which  is,  in  different  connections, 
used  to  denote  effort  of  very  different  kinds ;  and  what 
is  true  of  one  kind  may  be  quite  untrue  of  another. 
Now,  Mr.  Shaw's  main  argument  deals  with  work  of  one 
special  kind  only,  which  he,  with  the  utmost  precision, 
defines  in  terms  of  the  object  at  which  it  aims — that 
object  being  the  production  of  the  national  income.  All 
men  must  work,  he  says,  to  produce  a  national  income 
which  is  adequate,  for  if  they  do  not  the  socialist  State 
will  be  bankrupt.  But  when  he  seeks  to  prove  that  a 
work  of  this  particular  kind  would  by  most  men  be  per- 
formed so  freely,  and  indeed  with  so  much  ardour,  that 
not  even  a  threat  of  external  compulsion  would  be 
necessary,  and  appeals  to  facts  as  showing  that  the  best 
and  most  effective  work  is  and  always  has  been  per- 
formed for  its  own  sake  only,  it  is  evident  from  his  own 
description  of  them  that  the  kinds  of  work  which  he  selects 
to  prove  his  proposition  are  totally  different  from  that 
with  which,  and  with  which  alone,  his  main  argument 
has  any  sort  of  connection.  The  kinds  of  work  to  which 
he  is  here  referring  are,  to  take  a  few  of  his  instances, 
the  kinds  of  work  accomplished  by  men  such  as  Socrates, 
Paul  and  Spinoza;  and  on  these  kinds  of  work  he 
expatiates  in  the  following  way.  It  is  evident,  he  says, 
that  they  cannot  be  due  to  coercion,  for  coercion  is 


WORK  AND   PERSONAL  GAIN      195 

generally  applied,  not  to  stimulate,  but  to  suppress 
them.  It  is  equally  evident  that  they  cannot  be  per- 
fornied  for  the  sake  of  any  equivalent  in  the  way  of 
"  coin  or  income  ";  for  they  do  not  produce,  and  have 
no  relation  to,  any  of  the  things  of  which  income  ulti- 
mately consists.  Indeed,  if  financially  they  have  any 
result  at  all,  this  result  is,  he  says,  "mostly  a  minus 
quantity,"  and  the  men  who  perform  them  "  are  for- 
tunate if  they  are  not  persecuted  as  well  as  unpaid." 

If  such  be  the  case,  then,  one  thing  at  least  is  clear, 
that  however  "  precious  to  humanity  "  these  kinds  of 
work  may  be,  they  are  not  work  of  the  kind  which 
produces  a  national  income.  They  are  not  the  work 
which,  according  to  Mr.  Shaw's  definition  of  it,  the 
socialist  State  would  be  bound  to  exact  from  everybody 
unless  all  the  citizens  are  to  die  of  national  bankruptcy ; 
and  not  only  is  the  man  very  far  from  being  a  fool  who 
thinks  that  work  of  this  kind  can  be  measured  in  terms 
of  "coin"  or  its  equivalents,  but  the  man  must  be  a 
fool  who  imagines  that  it  can  be  measured  in  any  other 
way.  Men  produce  potatoes  in  order  that  they  may  eat 
potatoes;  and  the  only  ground  on  which  the  socialist 
State  would  have  to  insist,  "  under  pain  of  death  if  need 
be,"  that  every  man  for  so  many  hours  should  do  as 
much  of  this  work  as  he  can,  is  that  there  would  not 
otherwise  be  enough  potatoes  to  eat.  Since,  then,  every 
average  citizen  would  know  that,  whether  he  himself 
produced  much  income,  or  little,  or  none  at  all,  or  even 
a  minus  quantity,  the  total  product  would  be  affected 
to  a  barely  appreciable  degree,  and  that,  whatever  he 
did  or  did  not  do,  his  own  reward  would  be  the  same, 
is  it  likely  that  he  would  burn  with  desire  to  do  more 
work  or  better  than  such  as  would  just  save  him  from 
the  lash  of  the  watchful  taskmaster  ? 

The  absurdity  of  supposing  that  he  would,  sufficiently 
obvious  on  the  face  of  it,  is  emphasised  further  by  the 
two  following  facts.  The  first  of  these  facts — we  shall 
have  hereafter  to  deal  with  it  at  greater  length — is  this  : 
that  when  socialists  argue  about  incomes,  they  think  of 
incomes  in  the  abstract,  or  as  though,  like  water,  they 
were  so  many  homogeneous  quantities,  which  differed 
only  in  magnitude  as  measured  in  terms  of  money. 


f 


196     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

Now,  when  incomes  are  so  small  that  they  only  suffice 
to  purchase  a  little  more  or  less  of  the  simplest  neces- 
saries of  existence,  this  way  of  thinking  is  accurate  and 
clear  enough;  for  the  necessaries  of  life  are  few,  and  in 
most  cases  much  the  same.  But  these  are  precisely  the 
incomes  which  socialism  alms  at  abolishing.  These 
incomes  of  equal  primary  poverty  it  aims  at  expanding 
into  incomes  of  equal  affluence.  In  other  words,  to  a 
minimum  of  bare  necessaries  it  aims  at  adding  a  multi- 
tude of  superfluous  and  alternative  luxuries.  Let  us 
suppose,  for  example,  that  all  the  material  commodities, 
the  enjoyment  of  which  distinguishes  affluence  from 
poverty,  are  books,  and  that  the  actual  substance  of 
each  man's  affluence  is  his  library.  There  may  be  a 
thousand  libraries  representing  the  same  expenditure, 
and  yet  no  actual  book  ranged  on  the  shelves  of  one 
might  be  a  duplicate  of  any  actual  book  discoverable  on 
the  shelves  of  another.  The  shelves  of  one  might  be 
packed  with  nothing  but  Protestant  sermons,  those  of 
another  with  tomes  of  Jesuit  casuistry,  those  of  a  third 
with  novels,  or  amatory  verse,  or  histories  of  stage 
dancing.  Thus  no  individual  citizen,  as  a  worker  in  the 
socialist  State,  would  be  asked  to  be  "  precious  to 
humanity  "  by  printing  and  producing  books.  Each 
would  be  asked  to  display  an  impassioned  diligence  in 
multiplying  copies  of  this  or  that  book  in  particular. 
But  any  worker  might  say  that,  though  literature,  taken 
in  the  abstract,  was  wealth  in  its  most  precious  form, 
the  particular  book  in  the  production  of  which  he  was 
thus  invited  to  strain  himself  was  not  precious  but 
injurious,  or  at  best  utterly  futile,  and  that  he  would 
be  much  more  precious  to  humanity  by  idling  as  much 
as  he  dared,  and  so  diminishing  the  supply,  than  he 
would  be  by  working  his  hardest,  and  so  raising  it  to  a 
maximum.  If  a  Catholic  were  asked  to  multiply  books 
by  Baptists,  if  a  puritan  were  asked  to  colour  engraved 
pictures  of  l3allet-girls,  the  task  imposed  on  each  would 
be  certain  to  excite  in  him,  not  ardour,  but  antipathy; 
or  if  the  task,  as  it  might  be,  were  to  multiply  a  senti- 
mental novel,  it  might  well  excite  in  any  serious  man 
contempt.  Such  conscientious  objectors  might,  it  is 
quite  conceivable,  do  as  the  State  told  them,  thus  bowing 


WORK  AND   PERSONAL  GAIN      197 

themselves  in  the  House  of  Rimmon;  but,  since  the 
socialist  State  would,  ex  hypothesi,  pay  them  an  equally 
ample  sum  whether  they  obeyed  orders  or  no,  they  cer- 
tainly would  not  obey  them  for  any  conceivable  reason 
other  than  a  wish  to  save  themselves  from  the  whip  of 
the  State  slave-driver. 

But,  quite  apart  from  this  fact,  there  is  another  which 
is  embedded  by  socialists  themselves  in  their  own  pros- 
pectus of  promises,  and  which  leads  to  the  same  conclu- 
sion.   Foreniost  amongst  the  promises  which  they  dangle 
before  the  impassioned  average  worker  is  the  promise 
that  income-producing  work  will,  under  socialism,  be 
reduced  to  something  like  a  vanishing  quantity,  most 
of  his  life  being  thus  left  to  him  as  a  playground  for 
perfectly  free  activities  whether  of  mind  or  body.     But 
if  income-producing  work  really  is,  as  they  say,  equiva- 
lent to  "  being  precious  to  Humanity,"  and  if  a  sense  of 
being  precious  to  Humanity  is  the  choicest  of  all  human 
pleasures,  why  do  the  prophets  of  socialism  advertise  as 
a  prospective  blessing  the  reduction  of  these  hours  of 
supreme  bliss  to  a  minimum  ?     In  acting  thus  they  are, 
on  their  own  principles,  like  the  keeper  of  a  restaurant 
who,  having  informed  the  public  that  the  price  of  his 
set  dinner  included  a  supply  of  the  finest  wine  in  the 
world,  should  add,  as  a  further  advantage,  that  he  gave 
to  each  of  his  guests  no  more  than  a  drop  of  it.     What 
socialists  really  feel  when  they  promise  a  reduction  of 
income-producing  work  to  a  minimum  is  what  most  men 
would  feel  likewise,  and  what  Henry  George  said  bluntly 
is  felt  by  all  men— that  if,  in  the  case  of  the  individual, 
work  is  rendered  unnecessary  for  securing  the  means, 
and  the  amplest  means,  of  pleasure,  it  must,  for  the 
sake  of  others,  be  extorted  from  each,  like  the  slave's 
work,  as  a  means  of  avoiding  pain ;  and  the  kind  of  pain 
to  be  avoided,  as  Mr.  Shaw  himself  indicates,  could  be 
nothing   but   that   of   the   whip,    either   threatened   or 
actually  applied. 

The  uses  of  the  whip,  however,  under  a  regime  of 
equalised  incomes  are  by  no  means  yet  exhausted.  They 
would  not  be  confined  to  the  workshops  of  State  col- 
lectivism. The  whip  would  be  needed  for  purposes 
which,  quick  though  his  mind  is,  Mr.  Shaw  has  appar- 


198     LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 


COMPULSORY  IDLENESS 


199 


ently  never  so  much  as  contemplated.     If  the  hours  of 
slave-labour    necessary    for    producing    the    statutory 
national  income  were,  as  Mr.  Shaw  suggests,  reduced 
approximately  to  five,  and  if  seven  should  be  allowed 
for  sleep,  the  leisure  time  of  the  citizens,  during  which 
they  might  do  as  they  liked,  would  amount  substantially 
to  seven-tenths  of  their  waking  life.     How,  then,  do 
socialists  suppose  that  this  life  of  freedom  would  be 
occupied  ?     The  question  is  not  an  idle  one ;  for  here,  if 
anywhere,  would  be  found  that  spontaneous  self-expres- 
sion of  character  for  which  assured  and  equal  incomes 
can  alone  provide  a  basis.     According  to  Mr.  Shaw,  the 
State  would  say  to  the  citizens,  "  I  may  rob  you  of  your 
democratic  freedom  for  five  hours  a  day  for  the  necessary 
purpose  of  ensuring  that  the  incomes  which  you  are  to 
enjoy  may  be  produced ;  but,  when  once  those  hours  are 
over,  I  order  and  I  forbid  nothing."     But  the  matter 
would  by  no  means  end  here,  if  a  polity  of  the  kind 
which  Mr.  Shaw  imagines  were  realised.     There  are  two 
things,   at  all  events,  which,  if  equalised  incomes  are 
really  its  special  and  essential  feature,  a  socialist  State 
would  have  to  forbid  absolutely.     It  would,  in  the  first 
place,  have  to  forbid  saving.     For  if  any  of  the  citizens 
took — as  they  very  easily  might  do — to  saving  four- 
fifths  of  their  own  ample  allowances,  equality  of  circum- 
stance would  not  endure  for  a  twelvemonth.     The  State, 
therefore,  besides  seeing  that  an  ample  and  equal  income 
was  punctually  got  by  everybody,  would  have  year  by 
year  to  see  that  everybody  spent  the  whole  of  it.     But 
this  is  not  all.     It  would  have  to  forbid  likewise  another 
thing  more  important  than  simple  saving.     It  would 
have  to  forbid  any  citizen  in  his  long  hours  of  leisure 
to  supplement  the  work  performed  by  him  in  the  State 
workshops  by  any  further  productive  work  on  his  own 
account.     Unless  this  were  forbidden,  the  more  practical 
and  energetic  of  the  citizens,  when  their  State  work  was 
over,  might,  instead  of  being  precious  to  humanity  by 
philosophising  after  the  manner  of  Spinoza,  start  busi- 
nesses for  themselves,  in  which  the  full  fruits  of  diligent 
labour  or  genius  would  go  to  individuals  as  the  reward 
of  their  own  efficiency,  and  not  be  frittered  away  as 
virtual  presents  to  others  who  had  not  the  skill  or  the 


will  to  produce  such  things  for  themselves.  In  this 
way  an  additional  income  would  arise — an  income  not 
common  to  all,  but  confined  to  a  special  class,  all  of 
whose  members  would  be  richer,  some  incomparably 
richer,  than  the  rest.  A  socialist  State  could  never 
tolerate  this.  All  supplementary  enterprise  would  have 
to  be  put  down  at  any  cost.  A  situation  would  accord- 
ingly arise  for  which  Mr.  Shaw's  logic  makes  no  sort  of 
provision ;  but  if  incomes  were  to  remain  equal,  it  would 
have  to  be  met  somehow.  The  whip  which,  on  his  own 
admission,  would  have  to  be  kept  somewhere  for  use  in 
the  collectivist  workshops  would  accordingly  have  to 
perform,  not  one  function  only,  but  three.  Besides 
lashing  the  obstinate  or  the  idle  into  industry,  it  would 
have  to  be  lashing  the  conspicuously  industrious  into 
idleness;  and  when  not  terrifying  the  citizens  into  pro- 
ducing incomes  on  the  one  hand,  or  abstention  from 
producing  them  on  the  other,  it  would  have  to  be 
terrifying  these  unfortunate  persons  into  spending  them. 

Such,  then,  according  to  Mr.  Shaw's  account  of  it, 
would  the  socialist  polity  be,  as  intellectual  democrats 
have  now  come  to  conceive  it.  But  whatever  absurdities 
this  account  may  involve,  they  are,  let  it  be  said  again, 
not  peculiar  to  himself.  His  account  is  a  vivid  and 
signally  representative  exposition  of  the  idea  which  is 
maturing  in  the  minds  of  the  more  thoughtful  socialists 
of  to-day — the  idea,  that  is,  of  socialism  as  a  scheme  of 
moral  or  social  democracy  superimposed  on  a  scheme  of 
industry  the  oligarchic  character  of  which,  though  it 
cannot  be  denied  or  altered,  is  for  practical  purposes 
metamorphosed  by  the  final  scheme  of  distribution  to 
which  it  will  be  made  subservient. 

The  value  of  Mr.  Shaw's  account  of  a  polity  thus  con- 
stituted lies  firstly  in  the  fact  that  his  critical  powers  have 
enabled  him  to  signalise  clearly  the  defects  of  the  old 
socialist  ideal,  and,  secondly,  in  the  fact  that  these  same 
critical  powers  have  not  only  enabled  but  compelled 
him,  without  perceiving  it,  to  exhibit  the  defects  of  the 
new,  which,  though  different  from  those  of  the  old, 
belong  to  an  order  of  thought  no  less  remote  from  the 
region  of  actual  life.  The  Marxian  socialists,  indeed, 
were  in  one  respect  much  more  reasonable  than  their 


» 


200     LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 


successors.  They  assumed  that  the  natural  sentiment 
of  each  man  as  a  worker  was  what  it  really  is — namely, 
a  sentiment  which  demanded  the  full  value  of  his  own 
work  for  himself;  and  the  demand  of  the  Marxian 
socialists  that  all  incomes  should  be  equal  was  merely 
an  incidental  result  of  the  theory  that  no  one  man  in 
the  same  number  of  hours  produces  more  or  less  wealth 
than  another.  This  crudely  absurd  theory  the  modern 
socialists  have  abandoned ;  but  in  order  to  preserve  the 
doctrine  that  rewards  should  nevertheless  be  equal,  they 
have  been  obliged  to  replace  the  original  theory  by 
another  which  is  no  less  absurdly  at  variance  with  the 
character  of  the  average  man  than  the  theory  of  Marx 
was  at  variance  with  the  actualities  of  scientific  industry. 
The  Marxian  conception  of  labour  as  the  sole  agent  in 
production  is  not  more  illusory,  as  the  basis  of  a  socialist 
system,  than  the  general  sentiment  in  favour  of  equal 
distribution  by  which  socialist  thought  now  seeks  to 
replace  it.  Such,  at  least,  is  the  conclusion  to  which 
logical  analysis  leads  us.  We  will  now  turn  from  logical 
analysis  to  fact,  and  see,  with  the  aid  of  certain  concrete 
examples,  how  far  a  sentiment  in  favour  of  equal  dis- 
tribution has  proved  to  be  really  operative  when  put 
to  the  test  of  experiment. 


CHAPTER   II 


SOCIALIST  EXPERIMENTS 


If  a  detached  spectator — a  tourist  from  some  other 
planet — were  to  visit  the  earth  to-day,  and  give  his  at- 
tention to  the  socialist  or  social  democratic  movement, 
what  would  probably  strike  him  as  its  strangest  feature 
is  this,  that  those  who  take  part  in  it  are  willing,  on 
behalf  of  their  principles,  to  do  everything  in  the  way 
of  activity  except  to  show  that  they  are  practicable  by 
putting  them  into  experimental  practice.  He  would 
have  heard  orators  at  a  thousand  Trade  Union  meetings 
who  proclaimed  that  all  the  difficulties  of  the  modern 
world  would  be  solved  if  only  the  labourers  were  masters 
of  their  own  capital,  and  secured  for  their  own  class  the 
entire  product  of  their  exertions.  He  might  have  heard 
them  declaring  that  "  the  employers  have  never  done 
anything  for  labour  which  we,  the  labourers,  could  not 
any  day  do  for  ourselves."  But  although — to  take,  for 
example,  the  case  of  the  United  Kingdom — the  wage- 
earning  classes  at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century 
owned  a  collective  capital  of  a  thousand  million  pounds, 
our  tourist  might  have  failed  to  discover  that  any 
serious  attempts  were  being  made  by  them  to  employ 
this  capital  themselves  under  their  own  corporate  direc- 
tion. If  of  this  capital  they  would  venture  but  one 
hundredth  part,  ten  socialist  businesses,  each  with  a 
capital  of  a  million,  might,  as  modest  experiments,  be 
set  going  to-morrow;  and  if  socialism  is  correct  in 
principle,  the  success  of  these  could  not  fail  to  be  such 
that  others  would  soon  follow,  till  the  employers  of 
to-day  were  eliminated,  not  by  violence  but  by  competi- 
tion, and  all  who  now  work  for  wages  would  presently 
be  the  employers  of  themselves.  Why,  then,  our  tourist 
might  ask,   does   nothing  of  this  kind  happen  ?    The 

201 


jiais^..j_,." 


202     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

socialists,  he  might  say,  were  like  the  prisoner  who, 
according  to  the  story  told  by  an  American  humourist, 
had  been  locked  up  for  ten  years  in  a  cell,  '*  when  one 
day  a  thought  struck  him.  He  opened  the  window  and 
got  out." 

But  to  this  fear  on  their  part  of  testing  their  prin- 
ciples by  experiment  there  have  been  many  memorable 
exceptions.  Experiments  have  been  made  of  the  precise 
kind  in  question,  which,  curiously  few  as  they  are  in 
comparison  with  what  might  reasonably  have  been 
expected,  are  quite  sufficiently  numerous,  sufficiently 
different  in  some  respects,  and  sufficiently  like  in  others, 
to  constitute  a  body  of  evidence  astonishingly  coherent 
and  illuminating. 

Many  of  them,  in  respect  of  their  origin,  have  been 
British  or  European ;  the  latest  and  largest  was  Austra- 
lian; but  the  actual  scene  of  most  of  them  has  been 
naturally  in  the  New  World,  where  land  is  acquired  more 
easily  than  in  the  Old,  and  where  life  is  less  encumbered 
by  old  habits  and  traditions.  Records  of  some  eighty 
have  been  collected  by  Macdonald,  Noyes  and  Nordhoff, 
the  Australian  experiment  being  the  subject  of  a  volume 
devoted  to  itself.  They  cover  a  period  of  a  hundred 
and  thirty  years,  and  are  separable  into  two  groups — 
namely,  those  which  were  animated  by  a  sentiment 
having  its  basis  in  religion,  and  those  from  which  the 
religious  motive  has  been  practically,  if  not  formally, 
excluded.  Socialism  or  social  democracy  as  a  scheme 
founded  on  a  sentiment  which  demands  equality  in 
distribution  represents  socialist  thought,  not  only  in  its 
latest,  but  in  its  earliest  forms  also.  As  an  object  of 
possible  endeavour,  and  also  as  a  subject  of  ridicule,  it 
was  perfectly  familiar  to  the  citizens  of  ancient  Athens ; 
and  the  first  and  most  successful  attempt  to  realise  it 
in  the  modern  world  was  initiated  nearly  forty  years 
before  the  word  "  socialism  "  was  known. 

This  experiment,  which  was  the  formation  of  the  sect 
or  community  of  the  Shakers,  began  in  the  year  1774, 
and  thirty  years  later  another  experiment  followed  it — 
that  is  to  say,  the  formation  of  the  sect  or  community 
of  the  Rappites.  The  animating  principle  of  both  these 
was   religion.     The   foundress   of  the   Shakers   was  an 


RELIGIOUS   SOCIALISMS 


203 


English  woman,  Ann  Lee,  of  humble  birth  but  of  very 
remarkable  character,  who  believed  herself  to  be  the 
recipient  of  a  number  of  divine  revelations,  and  who, 
acting  under  this  belief,  emigrated  from  England  to 
America,  where  she  hoped  to  establish  a  polity  consonant 
with  the  mind  of  Christ.  George  Rapp,  the  founder  of 
the  Rappites,  was  a  native  of  Southern  Germany,  the 
son  of  a  small  farmer.  He,  like  Ann  Lee,  had  from  his 
youth  upwards  divine  revelations  of  his  own ;  and  in  the 
year  1805,  accompanied  by  three  hundred  disciples,  he, 
like  her,  set  sail  for  America,  with  the  object  of  founding 
a  Kingdom  of  Christ  on  earth. 

But  though  both  these  leaders  were  visionaries,  both 
of  them,  like  St.  Theresa,  united  to  religious  enthusiasm 
a  singular  aptitude  for  affairs;  and  their  respective 
schemes,  as  expressed  by  them  in  business  terms,  may 
be  said  to  have  resulted  in  almost  the  same  prospectus. 
The  principle  of  the  Shakers  was,  as  Ann  Lee  put  it, 
"  that  all  the  members  should  have  a  united  interest  in 
all  things";  that  the  Society  should  be  primarily  the 
owner  of  whatever  was  produced  by  individuals,  and 
should  then  dispense  to  the  individuals  whatever  each 
might  need ;  each  according  to  his  abilities,  whether  these 
were  great  or  small,  performing  in  return  such  work  as 
the  Elders  might  see  proper  to  assign  to  him.  The 
principles  of  the  Rappites  were  embodied  in  a  series  of 
Articles  of  Association,  to  which  every  member  had  to 
affix  his  signature.  The  first  of  these  Articles  consti- 
tuted a  deed  of  gift  on  the  member's  part  "  of  all 
property  whatever  possessed  by  him  or  her  to  George 
Rapp  and  his  heirs  or  assigns  for  ever,  to  be  held  and 
administered  on  behalf  of  the  members  generally;  and 
the  said  George  Rapp  covenanted  on  behalf  of  himself 
and  his  successors  that  they  would  supply  the  members 
severally  with  all  necessaries  of  life,  whether  in  youth 
or  age,  whether  in  sickness  or  health,  together  with  such 
care  and  consolation  as  their  situations  might  reasonably 
demand." 

During  the  next  seventy  years  these  two  pioneer  ex- 
periments were  followed,  in  the  United  States,  by  nearly 
eighty  others,  whilst  the  great  Australian  venture,  of 
which  mention  has  just  been  made,  came  twenty-five 


204     LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

years  later,  its  actual  scene  being  in  Paraguay.  Some 
of  these  were  religious,  most  of  them  essentially  secular. 
Otherwise,  the  object  proposed  was  in  all  cases  the  same. 
It  was  precisely  the  object  described,  as  we  have  seen, 
by  Mr.  Shaw — namely,  the  production  by  the  community 
of  an  adequate  total  income,  and  the  distribution  of  this 
amongst  the  members,  not  in  accordance  with  what  each 
produced  (which  would  vary),  but  in  accordance  with 
a  sentiment  relating  to  their  equal  needs,  and  now  com- 
monly expressed  in  the  formula  "  Each  for  all."  Be- 
tween all  these  experiments  there  was  another  point  of 
likeness  also,  which  exhibits  the  projectors  as  men  who, 
up  to  a  certain  point,  gauged  human  nature  accurately 
in  the  light  of  sound  common  sense.  They  all  of  them 
proposed  to  secure  the  triumph  of  socialism  by  means 
similar  to  those  which  had  secured  the  triumph  of  the 
modern  private  capitalist.  Modern  capitalism  has 
developed  itself  and  spread  itself  throughout  the  world, 
because  wherever  it  has  been  tried  it  has  generally  been 
found  to  work — to  be  industrially  more  efficient  than  any 
other  system  which  had  preceded  it.  Its  general  success 
has  consisted  in  a  multiplication  of  successful  units. 
The  practical  socialists,  with  whom  we  are  now  dealing, 
proposed  to  establish  socialism  through  units  of  success 
likewise,  but  through  units  of  a  different  kind.  Instead 
of  establishing  single  successful  businesses,  what  they 
aimed  at  establishing  was  equally  successful  communi- 
ties; and  the  difference  between  a  business  and  a  com- 
munity was  understood  by  them  to  be  this :  In  an 
ordinary  business  the  employer  and  the  employed  alike 
work  severally  for  the  benefit  of  themselves  and  their 
own  families.  In  a  socialist  community  all  families 
would  be  one.  As  matters  stand,  they  argued,  within 
the  limits  of  the  family  circle  economic  advantages  are 
not  divided,  but  shared.  Each  home,  in  short,  is  a 
miniature  socialism  in  itself.  In  order,  therefore,  that 
socialism  might  develop  into  a  working  system,  the  first 
thing  to  be  done  was,  according  to  them,  so  to  extend 
the  socialism  of  the  family  circle  that  a  considerable 
number  of  men,  women  and  children  might  be  welded 
together  into  a  family  of  a  larger  kind,  not  by  blood 
relationship,  but  by  a  sentiment  of  human  brotherhood, 


ssss 


RELIGIOUS   SOCIALISMS 


205 


and  by  a  consequently  "  united  interest  "  in  the  fruits 
of  their  collective  industry.  The  idea  of  all  the  pro- 
jectors was  to  begin  with  an  extended  family,  comprising 
from  two  or  three  hundred  up  to  fifteen  hundred 
persons;  and  if  one  such  group  were  successful,  others 
would  be  bound  to  follow.  At  all  events  they  realised 
that  if  an  effective  socialist  sentiment  could  not  extend 
itself  throughout  a  community  of  a  few  hundreds  of 
persons,  it  would  be  idle  to  look  for  its  extension  through 
the  world,  or  even  an  entire  nation. 

Let  us  now  consider  how  these  experiments  worked, 
beginning  with  the  religious,  which  deserve  special  atten- 
tion, and  of  which  the  two  just  mentioned  are  curiously 
contrasted,  but  equally  instructive  types.  Of  these  two, 
when  Nordhoff  published  his  accounts  of  them,  one — 
namely,  the  Shakers— had  lasted  for  more  than  a 
century;  the  other— namely,  the  Rappites— had  lasted 
for  seventy  years.  Both  had  been  constantly  pros- 
perous ;  the  Rappites  had  achieved  great  riches ;  and  yet 
each  body  had,  according  to  its  own  lights,  been  faithful 
to  the  doctrine  of  a  "united  interest  in  all  things." 
Both  may  be  regarded  as  triumphs  of  that  precise  senti- 
ment which,  as  Mr.  Shaw  describes  it,  "  renders  the 
very  idea  of  unequal  incomes  intolerable."  As  applied, 
however,  to  the  details  of  practical  life,  they  understood 
this  sentiment  in  very  different  ways. 

The  Rappites,  though  unswerving  socialists  in  respect 
of  their  own  fraternity,  made  no  pretence  of  socialism 
in  their  dealings  with  the  outside  world.  Possessing,  as 
they  did,  considerable  funds  to  start  with,  they  used 
these  in  the  following  ways.  In  the  first  place,  all  rough 
work  within  the  borders  of  their  own  settlement  they 
committed  to  hired  labourers,  many  of  whom  were 
Chinamen,  and  of  whom  it  was  caustically  said  that 
"  they  did  as  much  work  in  a  day  as  the  brethren  would 
do  in  six."  In  the  second  place,  they  became  investors, 
on  an  ever-increasing  scale,  in  outside  enterprises  such 
as  mines,  oil-wells  and  railroads,  and  were  ultimately 
found  to  be  the  principal  sleeping  partners  in  a  cutlery 
business,  then  the  largest  in  the  whole  of  the  United 
States.  Their  success,  in  short,  was  the  success  of  a 
species  of  exclusive  club,  their  socialism  being  a  pious 


206     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

eccentricity  uniting  the  members,  but  uniting  the  mem- 
bers only,  and  related  to  socialism  in  the  wider  sense 
of  the  word,  not  as  an  example,  but  as  a  negation  of  it. 
Very  different  in  this  respect  have  been  the  principles 
and  practice  of  the  Shakers.  Continuously  successful  as 
they  have  been  in  producing  an  income  adequate  to  their 
modest  wants,  they  have  depended  on  no  labour  but 
their  own;  and  their  tasks,  assigned  to  them  by  the 
Elders,  have  been  faithfully  performed  by  each  in  obe- 
dience to  a  sentiment  which,  identifying  each  with  all, 
and  eliminating  every  thought  of  gain  for  self  as  sinful, 
makes  the  labour  of  each  a  sacrifice  owed,  through  all, 
to  God.  If  a  polity  like  that  of  the  Rappites  is  com- 
parable to  a  religious  club,  a  polity  like  that  of  the 
Shakers  is  comparable  to  a  Franciscan  monastery.  That 
such  a  polity  may  prosper  and  be  self-supporting,  the 
experiment  of  the  Shakers,  like  that  of  the  Franciscans, 
shows ;  and  if  this  were  the  whole  of  the  matter,  it  would 
show  in  a  very  striking  way  that  the  principles  of  modern 
sociahsm,  as  expounded  by  Mr.  Shaw,  are  practicable. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  it  shows  something  else 
also.  The  Shakers  being  rigid  celibates,  it  is  obvious 
that  a  socialism  like  theirs,  though  self-supporting, 
cannot  be  self-renewing.  Denying  marriage  to  its  meni- 
bers,  it  postulates  a  world  outside  in  which  marriage  is 
prevalent.  This  fact  might  conceivably  be  no  more 
than  an  accident ;  but  it  actually  was  a  consequence  and 
an  illustration  of  a  fact  much  deeper  than  itself.  The 
Shakers  enjoined  celibacy,  not  as  an  isolated  merit,  but 
as  one  detail  of  a  sacrifice  co-extensive  with  the  socialist 
life,  another  detail  of  which,  and  one  of  prior  import- 
ance, was  the  sacrifice  of  all  desire  for  private  or  unequal 
gain ;  and  the  fact  that  these  members  were  not  members 
by  birth,  but  had  to  be  chosen  from  postulants  reared 
in  the  outside  world,  was  a  means  of  demonstrating,  as 
the  Shakers  themselves  attested,  how  rare  those  persons 
are  from  whom,  in  their  inmost  hearts,  a  true  renuncia- 
tion of  the  hope  of  unequal  gain  is  possible.  No  member 
was  accepted  till  after  a  year's  novitiate,  and  before  a 
year  was  over  most  of  the  postulants  would  depart. 
Thus  a  socialism  like  that  of  the  Shakers  is,  in  its  very 
essence,  no  less  exclusive  than  a  socialism  like  that  of 


!; 


SECULAR  SOCIALISMS 


207 


the  Rappites,  although  for  a  different  reason.  Just  as 
in  the  latter  case,  the  magic  circle  of  socialism  does  not 
include  the  average  manual  labourer,  so  it  does  not 
include  in  the  former  the  typical  or  average  man. 
Neither  of  such  schemes  is  comprehensive  in  any  general 
sense,  or  contains  in  it  any  promise  for  the  masses  of 
the  human  race. 

The  only  socialist  experiments  which  can  yield  a  direct 
moral  of  any  general  import  are  those  which  appeal  to 
the  motives  of  average  men  and  women,  and  no  more 
confine  their  promises  to  persons  of  exceptional  character 
than  they  do  to  persons  of  exceptional  business  intellect. 
We  will,  therefore,  now  turn  our  attention  to  the  secular 
experiments  comprised  in  the  list  just  mentioned,  and 
see    how   their   fortunes    compare    with    the   signal,    if 
limited,  success  attainable  by  those  of  the  religious  or 
quasi-conventual  type.     Of  these  secular  experiments, 
something   like   seventy   in   number,   it   would   be   not 
only  impossible  to  deal  with  all,  but  useless.     Most  of 
them  came  to  an  end  in  their  third  year,  or  earlier. 
We  will,  therefore,  confine  ourselves  to  the  few  which 
outlived  or  reached  their  fifth.     Of  such  experiments 
there  are  five— namely,  that  of  the  Owenites,  or,  to  give 
^   its   full   name.    The   New   Harmony   Community   of 
Equality;  three  other  communities,  extended  families, 
or  (as  they  preferred  to  call  themselves)  Phalanxes— 
namely,  the  Brook  Farm,  the  Wisconsin,  and  the  North 
American ;  and,  lastly,  most  ambitious  of  all,  the  experi- 
ment called  New  Australia. 

The  earliest  of  these,  the  New  Harmony  Community 
of  Equality,  was  financed  and  founded  in  the  year  1825 
by  a  prosperous  British  mill-owner,  the  celebrated 
Robert  Owen.  He  was  fortunate  in  finding  a  site 
equipped  already  for  his  purpose.  The  Rappites,  then 
m  the  twentieth  year  of  their  existence,  had  acquired 
amongst  other  properties  an  estate  of  30,000  acres,  and 
had  built  on  it  a  model  village  which  they  had  christened 
by  the  name  of  Harmony.  This  estate,  having  ceased 
to  satisfy  their  ambitions,  was  offered  for  sale  as  it 
stood,  and  Owen  became  the  purchaser,  taking  posses- 
sion of  it  with  nearly  nine  hundred  followers.  To  them, 
at  a  meeting  held  in  the  old  town-hall  of  the  Rappites, 


208     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

he  formally  recapitulated  the  principles  of  the  venture 
on  which  they  were  now  embarking.    In  language  almost 
identical  with  that  in  which  Ann  Lee  had  expressed  the 
aims  of  the  Shakers,  their  own  aim,  he  said,  was  to 
Sguish  all  inequalities  "  by  doing  away  wi  h  divided 
money  transactions,"  and  "  thus  uniting  all  separate 
C^?ere^sts  into  one."     AH  would  have  to  labour,  for  such 
is  the  lot  of  man.    Each  would  naturally  labour  accord- 
ing  to  his  best  abilities,  but  the  products  of  all  alike 
would  be  congregated  in  a  common  store ;  and  each,  for 
no  other  payment  than  the  labour  already  Performed 
by  him,  would  have  an  equal  right  to  select  from  the 
total  stock  whatever  particular  articles  he  or  his  might 
need.     Since,  however,  some  time  must  elapse  before 
their   own   labours   could   fructify,   Owen   stocked   the 
communal  store  himself  with  all  such  things  as  in  his 
opinion  were  necessary,  from  clothes  and  flour  down  to 
tea,  pickles  and  pills.     Such  measures  wej-e  ^ho^se  of  a 
mere  dictator.     They  were  wholly  opposed  to  the  prin- 
ciple which  he  set  out  to  establish,  and  as  soon  as  they 
were  in  his  opinion  complete  he  refused  to  exert  his  per- 
Tonal  powers  further.     He  transferred  the  management 
of  affairs  to  the  hands  of  a  Preliminary  Committee,  and 
took  himself  off  for  nearly  a  year  to  England,  hoping 
to  find  on  his  return  that  the  mustard-seed  of  his  social- 
ism  was  already  a  thriving  tree.     What  he  did  find  was 
something   signally   different.      The   Prelimmary   Com- 
r^Se  ha^d  indeed  given  general  satisfaction  by  lavishmg 
his  money  on  bands  and  on  nightly  dances ;  but  their 
sole   capacities   otherwise  had   proved   to   be   those   of 
ta  kers,  not  of  industrial  managers.     The  goods  m  the 
store  were  dwindling.     Industry,  in  a  state  of  chaos, 
gave  little  promise  of  replacing  theni.     The  Preliminary 
Committee  was  dissolved  in  feverish  haste,  and  a  new 
bodTformed  instead  of  it,  called  an  Executive  Council. 
This,  however,  in  spite  of  its  grander  name,  proved  no 
more   competent  than   its  predecessor,   and  the  whole 
undertaking  would  have  come  to  an  ignominious  end  if 
S^e  flock  o^^^^  had  not,  by  their  universal  request, 

compelled  their  shepherd  who  had  led  them  into  the 
wMerness  to  become  once  more  dictator,  and  do  what 
he  could  to  save  them.     As  soon  as  he  resumed  his 


OWEN'S   EXPERIMENT 


209 


authority,    matters   began   to   mend.     The   community 
bore  some  resemblance  to  an  orderly  private  business, 
the  head  of  which,  though  the  profits  might  not  be  large, 
was  known  to  allot  the  whole  of  them  in  equal  shares 
to  his  workpeople ;  and  the  novel  prospects  which  it  thus 
offered  to  labour  became  soon  so  widely  known,  and 
proved  to  be  so  attractive,  that  new  applications  for 
admission   to   its   ranks   multiplied,   which,   as   matters 
were  then  arranged,  it  was  not  possible  to  entertain. 
In  order,  therefore,  to  provide  for  the  new  influx,  the 
original  group  was  supplemented  by  three  others.     The 
single  community  thus  reappeared  as  four,  each  of  which, 
devoting  itself  to  industries  of  a  more  or  less  specialised 
kind,  was,  as  occasion  required,  to  exchange  its  own 
products  with  those  of  the  other  three,  in  quantities  to 
be  measured  by  paper  money,  or  labour-checks.     Owen, 
who  seems  not  to  have  perceived,  or  not  to  have  been 
disturbed   by   the   fact   that   the   serpent   of   "  divided 
money  transactions  "  was  thus  re-entering  Eden,  was 
fully  convinced  that  socialism  would  now  become  self- 
acting  ;  and  the  role  of  dictator  was  again,  and  for  the 
third  time,  renounced  by  him.     The  method  of  manage- 
ment by  Executive  Councils  was  resuscitated,  and  each 
of  the   four  groups  had   a   separate   Council  to   itself. 
Hereupon  there   arose  a  confusion  worse   confounded. 
The  question  of  production  was  entangled  with  the  ques- 
tion  of  commerce.      The   four  Councils  could  manage 
matters  no  better  than  one;  and  at  last  a  day  came 
when    a   great   general   meeting   urged   on    Owen   that 
dictatorship   must   be   forthwith   revived.     Owen,   who 
refused  to  accept  the  supreme  office,  agreed,  by  way  of 
compromise,  that  the  Councils  should  be  abolished,  each 
group  being  managed  by  a  dictator  of  its  own;  and 
of  four  co-equal  dictators  he  consented  to  act  as  one. 
Things  being  so  settled,  there  were  some  signs  of  im- 
provement, but  they  were  not  of  long  duration.     The 
groups    quarrelled    with    their   dictators,    the    dictators 
quarrelled  with  one  another,   and   industry,   thus   dis- 
organised, was  again  coming  to  a  standstill.     One  social- 
ist principle  alone  retained  its  vitality.     This  was  the 
sentiment  in  favour  of  equal  distribution — a  sentiment 
which  expressed  itself  in  getting  from  the  communal 


210     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

stores  a  great  many  more  commodities  than  the  members 
of  the  community  produced.     This  sentiment  was  one 
day  found  to  have  been  so  active  that  there  were  two 
commodities  only  of  which  the  popular  consumption  did 
not  thus  exceed  supply.     One  of  the  commodities  was 
glue.     Terrible  to  relate,  the  other  commodity  was  soap. 
Owen  could  endure  a  great  deal,  but  all  endurance  has 
limits.     Anxious  as  he  had  been  to  divest  himself  of  any 
dictatorial  power  in  the  business  of  communal  manage- 
ment, he  was  still  the  legal  owner  of  the  whole  communal 
property,  and  he  was  now  driven  to  an  expedient  the 
success  of  which  was  complete.     He  began  to  allocate 
buildings  and  portions  of  land  to  individuals  in  whom 
he  detected  some  spirit  of  enterprise.     The  effect  was 
as  startling  as  that  of  an  electric  shock.     Facing  the 
communal  hall,  there  was  soon  a  glitter  of  goods  in  the 
windows  of  a  private  grocery.     Sign-boards  began  to 
show   themselves   on   one   building   after   another,   an- 
nouncing the  establishment  of  various  private  manu- 
factures.   Such  being  the  trend  of  events,  Owen  accepted 
the  inevitable.     After  a  struggle  of  twelve  years,  during 
which  the  constitution  of  his  polity  had  been  six  times 
changed,  those  of  his  followers  who  deserved  this  he 
converted  into  private  owners,  allowing  them  to  lapse 
into  a  cluster  of  variously  prosperous  families,  each  pur- 
suing its  own  '*  divided  interest,"  and  indistinguishable 
from  the  families  of  the  commonplace  world  around  them. 
The    Brook    Farm,    the    Wisconsin    and    the    North 
American  Phalanxes,  and,  lastly.  New  Australia,  all  ran 
a    course    which,    in    substance   though    not    in    detail, 
resembled  that  of  the  Owenites.     All  began*  with  the 
same  high  hopes.     All  encountered  and  succumbed  to 
the  same  fundamental  difficulties ;  and  out  of  the  ashes 
of  each,  in  greater  or  less  vigour,  there  re-arose  the  spirit 
of  private  enterprise. 

The  Brook  Farm  Phalanx,  established  in  the  year 
1842,  when  the  failure  of  the  Owenites  was  a  tragedy 
still  recent,  would,  if  for  no  other  reason,  be  memorable 
on  account  of  the  character  of  its  chief  projectors.  They 
were  mostly  persons  of  education  and  culture,  the  philo- 
sophic Emerson  being  a  prominent  figure  amongst  them. 
Their  immediate  aim  was  to  found,  as  they  themselves 


BROOK  FARM 


211 


put  it,  a  sort  of  secluded  college  which,  whatever  might 
be  its  own  peculiarities,  would  show  how,  on  socialist 
principles,  life  might  be  transformed  for  all.     The  first 
thing  needful  for  such  a  pattern  community  of  equally 
lived  lives  was,  they  said,  that  it  should  be  self-support- 
ing.    It  must,  therefore,  have  its  basis  in  agriculture, 
and  "  the  perfume  of  clover  must  linger  over  it,  though 
it  aims  beyond  the  highest  star."     But  work  in  the 
fields,  if  cordially  shared  by  all,  would,  they  said,  soon 
require  but  a  fraction  of  the  members'  time.     All  desir- 
able manufactures  would  almost  at  once  be  added  to  it, 
and  would  "  provide  the  elegancies  as  well  as  the  com- 
forts of  life,  together  with  all  means  of  study,  and  all 
means  of  beautiful  amusement,"  without  an  expenditure 
of  more  industrial  toil  than  was  just  sufficient  for  impart- 
ing a  healthy  zest  to  leisure.     The  members  had  a  capital 
large  enough  for  all  their  initial  purposes  till  their  labour 
should  begin  to  replace  it ;  and  in  two  years'  time  they 
were  able  to  announce  publicly  that  "  every  step  has 
strengthened  the  faith  in  which  we  set  out,  and  the  time 
has  passed  when  even  initiative  movements  ought  to  be 
prosecuted   in   silence."     Their   lands,   they   said,   had 
yielded  abundant  harvests ;  weavers  and  other  artificers 
were  installed  in  a  great  workshop ;  and  one  great  wing 
of  their  communal  college  was  finished — a  building  with 
a  frontage  of  a  hundred  and  forty  feet.     A  little  more 
capital  might,  they  said,  be  acceptable,  and  in  all  in- 
vestments, theoretically,  there  is  doubtless  a  risk  of  loss ; 
"  but  we,"  they  went  on,  ''  have  now  reached  a  point 
where  such  risk  hardly  exists.     We  have  before  us  a 
solemn  and  glorious  work — to  prepare  for  the  time  when 
the  nations,  like  one  man,  shall  reorganise  their  town- 
ships on  the  basis  of  perfect  justice  such  as  ours."    Three 
years  later  the  college  home  was  in  ruins,  the  college 
lands  had  been  sold,  and  the  lately  sanguine  members- 
men,  wives  and  children — were  seeking  to  resume  their 
places  in  the  world  which  they  had  left  behind  them. 

The  Wisconsin  Phalanx,  established  but  two  years 
later,  was  better  equipped  than  the  Brook  Farm  Phalanx 
in  one  way.  Most  of  its  members  were  men  more 
habituated  to  manual  work,  and  it  lasted  a  year  longer  ; 
but  its  earlier  history,  otherwise,  was  very  nearly  the 


i! 


212     LIMITS  OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

^  to. 

same.     At  the  end  of  its  second  year  it,  too,  published 
an  account,  equally  sanguine,  of  what  had  been  accom- 
plished so  far.     "  We  have  had,"  said  the  writers,  ''  two 
excellent  harvests.     To  a  large  steam  saw-mill,  which 
we  bought  along  with  the  property,  we  have  added  a 
flour-mill,  a  smithy,  a  bootmaker's  shop,  a  laundry  and 
a  general  store.     We  have,  moreover,  completed  a  com- 
munal residence,  with  a  facade  twice  as  long  as  that  of 
the  Brook  Farm  College."     It  was  further  announced 
that  their  capital  in  the  form  of  agricultural  improve- 
ments,   buildings   and    implements   of   production   was 
increasing  at  an  annual  rate  of  £4  or  £5  per  member. 
Three  more  years  went  by,  and  no  check  was  admitted. 
Indeed,  by  the  end  of  the  fifth  year  accounts  had  become 
so  glowing  as  to  raise  a  curiosity  in  many  minds  that 
was  not  very  far  from  scepticism,  and  inquiries  made 
on  the  spot  by  an  emissary  of  the  New  York  Tribune 
brought  to  light  certain  details  by  which  popular  doubts 
were  justified.     The  official  accounts  were,  he  found,  so 
far  accurate  that  the  money  capital  with  which  they 
began  their  enterprise  had,  by  conversion  into  buildings, 
goods  and  improvements,  not  only  not  been  diminished, 
but  actually  did,  as  was  claimed  for  it,  show  an  un- 
doubted   increase.      It    appeared,    however,    that    the 
increase    had    been    largely    over-computed,    and    other 
revelations  were  added  of  a  much  more  important  kind. 
Despite  the  length  of  the  great  communal  residence,  the 
individual  lodgings,  he  said,  were  of  such  a  kind  that 
"  few  labourers  in  the  Eastern   States  would  tolerate 
them."     Still   more  was  the  writer  astounded   by  the 
wretched  and  filthy  condition  in  which  the  rooms  were 
kept,  and  also  by  the  manner  in  which  this  fact  was 
explained  to  him.     The  occupants,  whose  lot  had  been 
painted  as  one  of  growing  prosperity,  told  him  that  "  the 
struggle  for  necessaries  was  such  that  it  left  them  no 
time  to  be  tidy  " ;  and  they  further  confessed  that  many 
of  them  were  driven  to  supplement  the  little — namely, 
the  equal  pittance — which  the  Phalanx  was  able  to  allow 
them  by  wage-paid  labour  for  employers  on  the  ordinary 
farms  around  them.     Such  being  the  actualities  of  their 
situation,  which  underlay  the  publicly  issued  accounts 
of  it,  it  will  not  be  thought  surprising  that  before  another 


i. 

:l! 


NORTH  AMERICAN   PHALANX       213 

year  was  over  the  Wisconsin  Phalanx  was  dissolved. 
The  communal  property  was  broken  up  into  lots,  some 
of  the  members  acquiring  their  own  freeholds,  and  what 
was  left  of  the  Phalanx  reappeared  as  a  common  village. 
We  now  come  to  the  North  American  Phalanx,  which 
Noyes    describes    as    ''the    great    test    experiment    on 
which  practical  socialism  in  America  was  prepared  to 
stake  its  all."     The  projectors  fully  admitted  the  com- 
plete failure  of  experiments  like  Brook  Farm  and  Wis- 
consin,  and  claimed  to  have  discovered  the  cause  to 
which  this  failure  was  due.     The  projectors  of  these, 
they  said,  made  the  initial  blunder  of  so  pooling  their 
capital  that  no  account  was  taken  of  the  amounts  of  the 
individual  subscriptions.     No  one  subscriber  could  claim 
or  identify  so  much  of  the  total  as  his  own.     To  arrange 
matters  thus,  they  continued,  "  is  simply  to  substitute 
for  the  individual  employer  the  corporate  employer ;  and 
the  corporate  employer  is  still  more  irresistible,  for  the 
individual  worker  can  have  no  rights  as  against  him. 
We,      they  said,  ''on  the  contrary,  have  stricken  the 
relation  of  employer  and  employed  from  the  categories 
of  existence  altogether  "  by  arranging  that  each  member 
shall   be  the  owner  of  whatever  may  be  the  amount 
subscribed    by    him;    and    in   virtue    of   his   particular 
holding  he  will  be  able  to  claim  from  the  communal 
management   as   a   right,   "that   work   shall   be   found 
for  him  suitable  to  his  own  endowment."     He  will  thus 
be  employed,  they  said,  not  by  the  community,  but  by 
himself.     As  a  member  of  the  community  he  will  receive 
m  the  way  of  wages  an  equal  share  of  what  the  labour 
of  the  community  produces ;  but  the  capital  used  by  the 
community  produces  an  income  also,  and  this  income 
from  capital  will,  as  a  supplement  to  wages,  be  divided 
amongst  the  members,  not  in  equal  shares,  but  in  strict 
proportion  to  the  capital  held  by  each.     If  the  members 
desire,  by  saving,  to  increase  their  capitals  they  can  do 
so.     1  he  better  it  will  be  for  them,  and  the  better  for  the 
community   also.     Though   this   recognition    of  saving' 
nriay  lead  to  some  inequalities,  these  will  not  be  serious, 
since  life  will  be  lived  in  common;  and  that  spur  will 
be  provided  by  it  to  individual  diligence,  the  want  of 
which  has  been  the  secret  of  all  previous  failures. 


IIH 


214     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

Such,  in  outline,  were  the  principles  of  the  North 
American  Phalanx,  and  it  so  far  justified  the  high  hopes 
entertained  of  it  that  of  all  the  secular  socialisms  at- 
tempted in  the  United  States,  this  community,  which 
lasted  for  twelve  years,  was  for  something  like  nine  years 
apparently  the  most  successful.  The  standard  wage 
allotted  to  current  labour  seems,  indeed,  never  to  have 
exceeded  sixteen  shillings  a  week,  but  the  officials  of  this 
community  claimed,  at  the  close  of  its  eighth  year,  that 
the  average  capital  holding  per  family  of  five  persons 
had  risen  from  three  hundred  and  fifty  to  as  much  as 
seven  hundred  pounds.  A  better  test,  however,  of  its 
prosperity,  as  compared  with  the  squalors  of  Wisconsin, 
is  to  be  found  in  the  picturesque  descriptions  given  by 
successive  visitors  of  the  manner  in  which  the  members 
lived. 

The  earliest  of  these  relate  to  it  at  the  close  of  its 
second  year;  and  not  till  the  beginning  of  the  ninth  do 
any  of  the  later  descriptions  appreciably  differ  from  the 
first.  The  communal  dwelling,  with  its  hall  and  its 
endless  rows  of  bedrooms,  was  surprising,  said  all  these 
witnesses,  in  respect  not  alone  of  its  size,  but  of  its 
planning  and  equipment  also.  The  fittings  were  severely 
simple,  the  floors  were  without  carpets,  but  cleanliness 
reigned  everywhere.  The  meals,  well  served  at  long 
tables,  were  plentiful.  The  lighting  at  night  was  bril- 
liant. The  members,  in  summer  at  all  events,  would 
go  to  their  outdoor  work  as  though  it  were  some  healthy 
game.  In  the  hay-fields  they  often  sang.  After  supper 
the  younger  members  danced,  the  girls  in  summer 
wreathing  their  hair  with  flowers. 

Such,  till  the  community  was  entering  on  the  ninth 
year  of  its  existence,  were  its  principal  features  as  viewed 
by  the  eyes  of  strangers.  In  that  year,  however,  a 
fresh  inquirer  arrived  who,  though  met  by  all  outward 
signs  of  unabated  prosperity,  could  not  get  rid  of  the 
impression  that  something  was  wrong  somewhere. 
When,  not  content  with  appearances,  he  tried  to  dis- 
cover on  what  precise  principles  the  business  of  the 
community  was  managed,  and  how  all  this  prosperity 
was  maintained,  the  official  to  whom  he  addressed  him- 
self would  give  him  no  plain  answers,  but  wandered 


NORTH   AMERICAN   PHALANX      215 

away  into  discussions  as  to  why,  when  tested  by  ex- 
periment, socialism  always  failed.     Another  member,  a 
woman,  descanted  to  him  on  the  same  subject.     But, 
whatever  the  cause  of  these  ominous  symptoms,   the 
same  inquirer,  returning  a  year  afterwards,  was  led  to 
conclude  that  it  could  not  have  been  more  than  tem- 
porary.    Several  things  had  happened,  and  the  air  was 
alive    with   optimism.      A   new   member   had    arrived, 
bringing  with  him  a  large  capital.     The  direct  wages 
of  labour  had  been  raised  from  fifteen  to  sixteen  shillings 
a  week;  the  new  member  had  insisted  on  building  a 
house  for  himself,  on  having  his  meals  alone,  and  on 
living  in  his  own  way.     It  appeared,  moreover,  that  the 
new  member's  exclusiveness  was  so  far  from  unpopular 
that  it  merely  represented  a  sentiment  which  in  secret 
had  long  been  general,  and  which  had  now  expressed 
itself  in  action.     The  original  system  of  communal  meals 
had    been   abolished,    and   the   great   hall   now   was   a 
restaurant,  where  friends  or  solitary  persons  could  eat 
by  themselves,  and  choose  what  dishes  they  pleased. 
An  interesting  light  on  the  sentiment  which  had  thus 
revealed  itself  is  thrown  by  another  inquirer  about  a 
year  afterwards.     Many  members,  he  found,  were  be- 
ginning to  admit  plainly  that,  though  communal  life 
was  not  without  its  advantages,  they  could  any  day 
make  a  very  much  better  living  by  working  directly  for 
themselves  or  under  a  good  employer  than  they  could 
under  a  socialist  system  of  so-called  self-employment. 
A  little  later  these  further  facts  were  recorded.     Although 
the  officials  of  the  community  had  not  very  long  ago 
claimed  for  the  members  a  capital  which,  through  their 
various  savings,  had  come  to  represent  an  average  of 
£700  per  family,  the  truth  had  leaked  out  at  last.    Few 
of  them  had  in  reality  managed  to  save  anything,  and 
those  who  had  saved  something  had  been,  for  some  time 
past,   investing  their  money,  not  in  the  stock  of  the 
community,    but    in    various    outside    ventures    which 
promised    securer    dividends.      The    wisdom    of    these 
persons  was  presently  justified  by  the  event.     It  ap- 
peared that  from  the  very  beginning  that  part  of  the 
members'   incomes  which  had   been   paid   to   them   in 
addition   to   their   earnings   as   interest   on   their   own 


216     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 


capital,  had  not  really  been  interest,  but  had  come  out 
of  the  capital  itself;  and  that,  though  the  new  subscriber 
might  have  eased  the  situation  somewhat,  the  cash  of 
the  Phalanx  presently  would  have  dwindled  to  the  last 
dollar.  That  such  was  indeed  the  case  became  soon 
painfully  evident.  Provisions  began  to  fail.  The  com- 
munal hall  remained,  with  its  apparatus  of  tables,  but 
the  tables  at  supper-time  would  very  often  be  empty; 
and  the  socialist  edifice  was  sensibly  tottering  to  its  fall 
when  the  final  crash  was  precipitated  by  a  purely  extra- 
neous accident.  A  large  communal  outhouse  was  one 
day  destroyed  by  fire.  The  damage  amounted  to  barely 
£2000,  or  less  than  what,  according  to  the  sanguine 
officials,  had  been  the  capital  holding  of  any  three 
average  families;  and  Horace  Greely  offered  to  restore 
the  building  himself.  But  the  general  opinion  of  the 
members  was  that  affairs  were  hopeless.  The  end  was 
not  long  in  coming.  The  North  American  Phalanx, 
having  lived  out  its  twelfth  year,  was,  in  the  language  of 
its  projectors,  "  stricken  out  of  the  categories  of  exist- 
ence," and  its  lands,  like  those  of  its  predecessors,  were 
once  again  submerged  by  the  tides  of  individual 
ownership.^ 

Experiments  such  as  these,  if  each  of  them  stood  alone, 
might  be  looked  on  as  too  narrow  in  their  scope,  too 
much  at  the  mercy  of  chance  causes  or  accident,  to  afford 
a  basis  for  any  general  conclusions.  But  the  causes 
which  proved  fatal  to  all  before  twelve  years  were  over 
were,  in  all  these  experiments,  the  same. 

To  speak  broadly,  they  may  be  reduced  to  two,  one 
of  them  inhering  in  the  nature  of  all  collective  industry, 
the  other  inhering  in  the  nature  of  human  beings,  with 
the  sole  exception  of  small  and  essentially  select  minori- 
ties.    The  first  of  these  causes  was  a  want  of  ability  in 

^  As  an  example  of  the  relative  efficiencies  of  the  socialist  and  capital- 
ist systems,  it  may  be  mentioned  that  one  of  the  religious  communities 
of  America,  not  included  in  the  accounts  of  Macdonald,  Noyes  or 
Nordhoff,  came  to  an  end  about  the  year  lOOO.  The  members  numbered 
about  200,  the  annual  value  of  their  proj)eriy,  as  thev  themselves  utilised 
it,  haying  been  about  £40  per  member.  Tlie  short  newspaper  paragraph 
in  which  the  incident  was  recorded  wound  up  with  the  bald  statement 
that  the  property  had  been  acquired  by  a  neighbouring  millowner,  who 
was  erecting  on  it  model  dwellings  for' three  thousand  workpeople. 


LANE'S   EXPERIMENT 


217 


industrial  direction.  The  second  was  a  want  of  any 
general  sentiment  sufficiently  strong  and  persistent  to 
ensure  that  directions,  if  given,  should  be  accepted  with 
submission  on  the  one  hand,  and  carried  out  with  a 
diligence  punctual  and  sustained  on  the  other,  under  a 
social  system  the  essential  object  of  which  was  to  render 
the  conditions  of  the  worst  worker  equal  to  the  con- 
ditions of  the  best.  But  before  we  discuss  this  question 
in  any  greater  detail,  there  is  another  experiment  which 
awaits  our  examination  still — the  experiment  of  "  New 
Australia,"  projected  by  William  Lane. 

Lane,  by  birth  an  Englishman,  had  early  in  life  been 
frenzied  by  the  doctrines  of  Karl  Marx,  and  had  sought 
a  career  in  Canada  as  an  apostle  of  the  universal  strike. 
The   effects  of  his  oratory  there,   however,   being  not 
equal  to  his  expectations,  he  betook  himself  to  Australia, 
about  the  year  1890,  in  quest  of  human  material  more 
quickly   inflammable.     What   he   hoped   for   he   found. 
Australia  was  at  that  time  being  agitated  by  a  series  of 
strikes  so  savage,  so  obstinate,  and  concerted  with  such 
deliberate   care,   that   business   was   largely   paralysed, 
banks  were  suspending  payment,  and  the  whole  industrial 
structure  seemed  on  the  verge  of  ruin.     Lane  at  last 
found  himself  in  a  thoroughly  congenial  atmosphere.    To 
the  native  apostles  of  the  strike-movement  he  added 
himself  like  a  second  Paul ;  but  even  here  the  trend  of 
events,  when  he  had  watched  it  longer,  disappointed 
him.      The     employers     were,     in     appearance,     being 
brought  rapidly  to  their  knees;  but  the  strikers  more 
rapidly   still   were   reducing  themselves   to   a   state   of 
destitution;  and  the  movement  threatened  to  collapse, 
haying  only  effected  this — that  wages,  which  had  been 
rising  for  the  previous  forty  years,   would  have  sunk 
back  to  the  level  of  the  year  1850.     With  a  flash  of 
genuine  insight  Lane  adapted  himself  to  the  situation. 
The  popular  logic  of  democracy  was,  he  realised,  vitiated 
by  one  great  defect.     Labour  was  accustomed  to  tell 
itself  that  labour  was  all-powerful,  for  if  the  labourers 
ceased  to  labour,   the  employers  would  have   nobody 
to  employ ;  but  a  general  cessation  of  labour  was,  so 
he  saw,  impossible,   since,  before  the  employers  were 
ruined,  the  labourers  would,  if  they  still  stood  idle,  be 


218     LIMITS   OF   PURE  DEMOCRACY 

dead.  He  accordingly  began  to  address  the  Australian 
wage-earners  thus  :  "  As  a  method  of  getting  rid  of  the 
employers  I  have,"  he  said  in  effect,  "  hitherto  preached 
the  strike  to  you.  I  was  wrong.  I  am  here  to  show 
you  a  more  excellent  way.  Instead  of  withdrawing  our 
labour  in  the  sense  of  ceasing  to  exercise  it,  the  proper 
course  for  you  and  me  to  pursue  is  to  withdraw  our 
bodily  persons,  and  our  active  labour  along  with  us,  and 
find  some  place  of  our  own  where  we  can  labour  for 
ourselves  only.  The  employers,  with  no  one  to  steal 
from,  and  nothing  left  to  steal,  will  die  like  flies,  as  they 
should  do ;  but  as  for  us,  who  produce  all  wealth  already, 
whatever  we  produce  we  shall  keep,  instead  of  getting 
in  wages  not  more  than  a  third  of  it." 

Lane,  who  was  gifted  with  remarkable  powers  of  per- 
suasion, was  soon  the  head  of  a  large  throng  of  disciples 
— men  who,  drawn  from  the  upper  ranks  of  labour,  had 
been  earning,  before  the  strikes,  an  average  annual  wage 
of  some  £170,  and  who,  if  they  worked  in  concert  under 
no  other  master  than  themselves  would,  according  to  his 
prospectus,  all  have  uniform  incomes  of  something  above 
£500.  In  a  time  incredibly  short  he  had,  for  the  purpose 
of  carrying  his  ideas  into  action,  founded  a  Company, 
the  subscriptions  to  which  were  beyond  his  extremest 
hopes.  He  was  not,  however,  betrayed  into  any  undue 
precipitancy.  He  began  with  paying  certain  men  of 
experience  to  visit  the  likeliest  countries,  and  discover 
what  available  territory  would  be  fittest  for  the  impend- 
ing enterprise.  Such  a  territory  was  at  last  discovered 
in  Paraguay.  It  was  eminently  ricfi  in  pasture,  in  cul- 
tivable lands,  and  forests,  these  last  comprising  some 
of  the  finest  timber  in  the  world ;  it  was  half  as  large  as 
an  average  English  county;  and,  so  long  as  the  settlers 
did  their  best  to  develop  it,  the  Paraguayan  Government 
would  concede  it  to  them  as  virtually  their  own  for 
nothing.  This  offer  was  accepted,  and  so  ample  were 
the  Company's  funds  that  Lane  purchased  a  vessel 
which,  packed  to  its  utmost  capacity,  conveyed  to  the 
land  of  promise  a  first  contingent  of  shareholders,  and 
which  would,  it  was  so  hoped,  be  making  in  the  near 
future  constant  similar  journeys. 

The  voyage  was  marked  by  but  two  embarrassing 


NEW  AUSTRALIA 


219 


incidents.  Some  of  the  immigrants  were  so  affected  by 
the  air  of  equality  that  they  wished  to  have  their  say 
as  to  how  the  ship  should  be  navigated.  It  appears 
that  they  were  somewhat  surprised  when  ordered  to 
hold  their  tongues.  But  greater  friction  was  caused  by 
certain  of  the  younger  members,  not  of  the  same  sex, 
who  developed  a  propensity  to  haunt  the  decks  at  night, 
two  by  two  in  joint  contemplation  of  the  moon.  Lane 
may  not  have  regarded  romance  as  the  tainted  child  of 
capitalism,  nor  capitalism  as  unmasked  romance,  but, 
he  being  a  rigid  puritan  as  well  as  a  professed  atheist, 
the  one  shocked  him  just  as  much  as  the  other.  He 
issued  an  edict  that  these  proceedings  must  cease,  and 
battened  the  young  ladies  down  at  the  first  approach 
of  twilight.  The  would-be  lovers,  however,  were  more 
restive  than  the  would-be  navigators,  and  disputed  the 
right  of  an  equal  to  order  his  equals  thus.  Lane's 
answer  was,  "  This  ship  is  owned  by  a  Company.  Com- 
panies are  governed  by  the  shareholders,  and  share- 
holders have  votes  in  proportion  to  the  shares  held  by 
them.  I  have  in  my  pocket  a  proxy  for  every  share- 
holder we  have  left  behind  us,  and  rny  votes  alone  will 
outweigh  those  of  the  lot  of  you."  To  this  anti-capitalist 
logic  the  lovers  had  no  answer,  and  all  disagreements 
were  forgotten  in  the  joys  of  a  safe  arrival.  The  pur- 
chase of  cattle  and  implements,  and  the  erection  of 
temporary  dwellings,  had  all  the  excitements  of  a  picnic. 
These  dwellings,  constructed  of  rough  woodwork  and 
mud,  were,  as  the  builders  observed,  less  fitted  for  men 
than  animals;  but  everything  must  have  a  beginning, 
and  these  were  well  enough  as  a  makeshift.  Meanwhile, 
money  was  so  plentiful  that  one  of  their  early  transac- 
tions (as  happened  in  the  case  of  the  Owenites)  was  the 
purchase  of  instruments  for  a  band;  and  as  soon  as 
matters  were  sufficiently  far  advanced,  the  incipient 
township  was  visited  by  officials  of  the  Paraguayan 
Government :  there  were  trumpetings,  speeches,  a  great 
unfurling  of  flags,  and  the  settlement  was  formally 
recognised  under  the  title  of  "  New  Australia." 

The  way  to  universal  wealth,  to  universal  equality, 
to  true  social  democracy,  to  the  brotherhood  of  emanci- 
pated man,  now  seemed  to  be  clear.     As  the  settlers 


220     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

looked  round  them  at  their  great  herds  of  cattle,  at  the 
prairies  green  with  pasture,  at  their  forests  waiting  for 
the  axe,  at  the  soils  promising  plenty  at  the  first  touch 
of  the  spade,  at  all  their  accumulated  implements  of 
cultivation  and  woodcraft,  and  even  at  their  simple 
shelters  which  soon  would  be  solid  mansions,  their 
emotions  were  similar  to  those  of  the  members  of  the 
Brook  Farm  Phalanx.  They  foresaw  themselves  setting 
an  example  which,  at  no  very  distant  time,  "  the  workers 
of  the  world  "  would  follow,  but  first  and  foremost  the 
wage-slaves  of  old  Australia,  who  would  presently  come 
in  their  thousands,  leaving  that  land  of  bondage,  to 
enjoy  the  freedom  and  plenty  of  the  New  Australian 
paradise.  In  twelve  years'  time  New  Australia  was  a 
thmg  of  the  past.  Most  of  the  members  were  starving. 
Many  of  them  were  begging  the  officials  of  capitalist 
governments  to  pay  their  passages  back  to  the  home 
they  had  so  rashly  left.  Lane  himself  disappeared  as  a 
ragged  fugitive,  and  the  only  members  of  his  company 
left  in  the  socialist  paradise  were  a  few  vigorous  men 
who  acquired  lands  of  their  own,  and,  growing  into 
capitalists  on  their  own  account,  became  all  of*' them 
substantial,  and  some  of  them  very  opulent,  farmers. 

The  precise  events  which  led  up  to  this  catastrophe 
were  partly  due  to  the  character  of  Lane  himself,  partly 
to  that  of  his  followers.  In  him,  as  in  most  demagogues, 
were  united  two  tempers,  and  two  sets  of  convictions. 
He  was  no  doubt  a  believer  in  the  natural  equality  of 
men,  and  in  the  equal  and  astonishing  affluence  which 
the  masses  would  secure  for  themselves,  the  moment 
they  escaped  from  the  depredations  of  a  small,  dominant 
class.  At  the  same  time,  as  not  only  his  conduct  but 
also  his  own  statements  show,  the  conviction  lay  deep 
in  his  mind  that  these,  his  natural  equals,  could  only 
achieve  equality  by  submitting  their  wills  to  that  of 
some  one  exceptional  man—"  some  better  Napoleon," 
It  was  thus  that  Lane  described  him,  "  with  the  brain 
of  a  Jay  Gould  and  the  heart  of  Christ."  In  drawing 
this  picture,  he  was  undoubtedly  drawing  what  he  took 
to  be  a  portrait  of  himself;  and,  so  far  as  the  conception 
of  his  enterprise  and  its  earlier  stages  are  concerned,  it 
is  obvious  that,  apart  from  him,  there  would  have  been 


LANE  AS   A  DESPOT 


221 


no  such  enterprise  at  all.  Indeed,  it  may  be  said  that 
on  his  part  some  measure  of  autocracy  was  inevitable 
up  to  the  time  when  the  settlers  took  final  possession 
of  their  territory,  and  certain  divisions  of  labour  had  at 
once  to  be  made  by  somebody,  for  the  purposes  of 
running  up  dwellings,  driving  their  cattle  to  pasture, 
and  beginning  some  sort  of  cultivation.  But  though  the 
spirit  of  the  autocrat  never  deserted  him  to  the  last, 
a  tinie  came  when  he  was  compelled  by  his  avowed 
principles,  and  also  by  a  formal  agreement  of  which  he 
was  himself  the  author,  to  place  the  control  of  industry 
on  a  purely  democratic  basis  by  handing  it  over  to 
directors  chosen  by  the  workers  themselves.  This  step 
came  none  too  soon;  for  the  spirit  of  pure  democracy, 
which  had  twice  asserted  itself  on  the  ship,  had  been 
subsequently  exasperated  by  Lane  on  two  still  graver 
occasions.  Lane  was  a  strict  teetotaler.  He  did  not 
believe  in  God,  but  he  believed  that  alcohol  was  the 
devil.  Whilst  the  mass  of  his  company  were  making 
their  way  to  the  settlement,  he  discovered  that  some 
of  the  mothers  had  brought  with  them  jars  of  treacle, 
not  for  themselves,  but  for  their  children,  to  whom  it 
was  extremely  soothing.  Lane,  who  declared  that  treacle 
had  the  venom  of  alcohol  lurking  in  it,  gave  instant 
orders  that  the  jars  should  be  snatched  from  them  and 
thrown  away.  But  the  consternation  which  this  act 
produced  was  mild  in  comparison  with  that  produced  by 
another.  As  soon  as  the  settlement  had  assumed  some 
semblance  of  order.  Lane  issued  a  formal  and  general 
edict  forbidding  the  consumption  by  anybody  of  intoxi- 
cating liquor  of  any  kind.  But,  although  men's  lips 
might  obey  him,  he  could  not  command  their  cravings, 
and  at  last  it  came  to  his  knowledge  that  certain  obsti- 
nate rebels  had  been  drinking  native  whisky  in  taverns 
beyond  the  border.  Faced  by  so  gross  an  outrage  on 
the  part  of  his  dear  equals.  Lane  at  once  invoked  the 
aid  of  the  Paraguayan  army,  and  those  who  had  dared 
to  disobey  him  were  expelled  from  the  socialist  Eden  by 
the  bayonets  of  alien  capital.  It  is  not  surprising  to 
learn  that  a  sentiment  which  had  long  been  smouldering 
began  now  to  express  itself  in  the  observation  that 
Lane  was  "  a  changed  man."    But  the  spirit  of  pure 


222     LIMITS   OF   PURE  DEMOCRACY 

democracy  had  its  own  triumphs  before  it.  On  one 
occasion,  indeed,  it  had  shown  its  mettle  already,  when 
Lane,  by  a  happy  accident,  was  too  far  off  to  interfere 
with  it.  Before  the  mass  of  the  immigrants  transferred 
themselves  to  their  new  kingdom,  a  party  was  dis- 
patched in  advance  to  make  some  preparation  for  their 
arrival.  The  journey  took  two  days,  the  pioneers  of 
democracy  had  to  sleep  on  the  way,  and  accordingly, 
when  night  drew  on,  the  question  arose  as  to  where  they 
should  pitch  their  tents.  No  action  could  be  taken  till 
the  general  will  had  expressed  itself.  Hereupon  there 
ensued  a  general  chatter.  One  man  was  in  favour  of 
one  spot,  another  was  in  favour  of  another,  and  whilst 
they  were  still  disputing  they  were  startled  by  drops 
of  rain.  These  drove  them  at  once  to  the  only  decision 
possible,  which  was  to  set  up  their  tents  on  the  nearest 
ground  accessible  into  which  they  could  drive  a  tent- 
peg.  Of  all  the  spots  they  might  have  chosen  it  hap- 
pened to  be  the  most  exposed.  The  rain  turned  to  a 
deluge,  the  wind  was  rising  rapidly ;  their  tents  were 
blown  down  as  fast  as  they  set  them  up;  the  lamps  in 
their  stoves  were  blown  out  as  fast  as  they  put  a  match 
to  them ;  they  could  not  cheer  themselves  with  so  much 
as  a  cup  of  tea ;  and  they  at  last  exhibited  to  the  sunrise, 
after  a  night  under  the  naked  sky,  the  first  practical 
triumph  of  the  principles  of  pure  democracy. 

This  event  may  seem  trivial  enough  in  itself,  but  it 
is  not  trivial  as  a  type  of  what  was  about  to  follow 
during  the  twelve  years  that  were  ahead  of  them.  At 
a  very  early  stage  of  the  drama,  when  Lane  still  acted 
as  autocrat,  the  different  groups  of  workers,  whatever 
might  be  the  tasks  assigned  to  them,  began  to  complain 
that  their  own  work  was  the  hardest,  the  rest  being 
unduly  favoured;  and  when  Lane's  initial  autocracy 
gave  place,  as  agreed,  to  a  system  of  industry  controlled 
by  "  the  people  themselves,"  they  were  fully  determined 
that  these  wrongs  should  cease.  The  workers  under  the 
new  constitution  were  directed  or  superintended  by 
officials  of  their  own  choosing ;  and  so  complete  was  the 
concession  made  to  the  principles  of  pure  democracy 
that  if  any  group  of  workers  was  dissatisfied  with  the 
man  chosen  to  direct  them,  a  bell  might  be  rung,  a 


DEMOCRATIC   IMPOTENCE  223 

popular  meeting  called,  the  obnoxious  official  deposed, 
and  another  chosen  instead  of  him.  The  general  result 
was  that,  in  every  group,  whenever  a  director  tried  to 
secure  from  his  men  work  which  seemed  to  them  either 
too  hard  or  too  orderly,  instant  revolt  ensued.  The 
tocsm  of  democracy  was  sounded,  and  the  director  super- 
seded by  another,  certain  sooner  or  later  to  suffer  the 
same  fate.     The  only  work,  indeed,  to  which  they  took 

with  spontaneous  vigour  was  that  of  ringing  the  bell 

a  species  of  exercise  in  which  the  boys  delighted.  But 
this  was  not  all.  Except  when  united  for  revolt,  the 
workers  respected  one  another  no  more  than  they  re- 
spected their  officials.  One  of  their  industries  was  the 
cultivation  of  melons ;  and  so  completely  was  the  spirit 
of  "  each  for  all  "  absent,  that  they  would  trample  down 
the  fruit  raised  by  the  labour  of  their  fellows  if  they 
could,  by  so  doing,  take  a  short  cut  home  to  their 
dinners.  When  they  left  their  work  they  would  con- 
stantly lose  their  tools,  as  things  which,  belonging  to 
everybody,  anybody  might  be  left  to  find.  They  allowed 
their  cattle  to  deteriorate  for  want  of  sufficient  attention. 
Though  they  did  a  little  dilatory  wood-cutting  for  their 
own  immediate  purposes,  one  man  only,  whose  example 
was  not  followed,  endeavoured  to  show  what  wealth 
was  lying  idle  in  their  enormous  forests.  Even  in  the 
matter  of  their  dwellings,  the  settlers  proved  so  helpless 
that  many  of  them,  when  the  enterprise  ended,  were 
occupying  the  huts  which,  when  first  hastily  constructed, 
had  been  said  by  themselves  to  be  fit  only  for  animals. 

Nevertheless,  these  stalwart  men,  in  possession  of  a 
most  fruitful  soil,  and  a  very  considerable  live-stock, 
would  hardly  have  been  human  if,  however  disorderly 
their  work,  they  had  not  for  a  time  provided  themselves 
with  the  bare  necessaries  of  life.  It  is  true  that,  under 
their  new  conditions,  their  way  of  living  at  its  best  was 
poverty  as  compared  with  what  it  had  been  in  the  days 
of  what  they  called  their  slavery;  but  for  many  years 
they  were  far  removed  from  want,  and  even  when  it 
approached  they  were  not  at  first  conscious  of  it.  But, 
meanwhile,  the  industrial  millennium  was  as  far  off  as 
ever;  and  at  last,  as  they  waited  in  vain  for  it,  their 
efforts,  such  as  they  were,  began  gradually  to  decline.    A 


224     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 


certain  number  seceded,  demanding  from  Lane  repayment 
of  a  portion  of  their  own  capital,  and  new  arrivals  from 
Australia  did  but  in  part  replace  them;  but  their  first 
general  awakening  to  the  actual  facts  of  the  situation 
was  due  to  Lane  himself,  who  one  day  informed  them 
of  the  interesting  fact  that,  as  matters  then  stood,  the 
average  value  of  the  total  product  of  each  of  them  was 
less  than  the  actual  wages  of  an  English  agricultural 
labourer,  and  that  ruin  was  directly  ahead  of  them  if 
they  did  not  at  once  bestir  themselves  and  do  better 
than  this.  So  desperate,  indeed,  did  the  situation 
prove  to  be  that  another  remedy  was  needed  of  more 
immediate  kind.  This  was  the  raising  of  capital  by  the 
sale  of  all  their  cattle,  now  miserable  beasts,  to  some 
capitalist  speculator,  who  gave  for  them  little  more 
than  the  bare  value  of  their  hides.  The  community 
breathed  again,  and  Lane  informed  his  followers  that 
all  would  yet  be  well  if  they,  who  had  once  been  earning 
70s.  a  week,  would  only  do  work  of  the  value  of  as  much 
as  £7  a  year.  His  appeal  would,  however,  have  been 
fruitless  if  it  had  not,  from  some  quarter  or  another, 
called  forth  a  proposal  which  was  accepted  as  a  new 
revelation.  "  Our  cattle,"  it  was  said,  "  may  have 
gone,  but  our  forests  still  remain.  Let  us  use  our  capital 
as  wages,  and  turn  our  forests  into  gold  by  employ- 
ing cheap  native  labour."  Whatever  Lane  may  have 
thought  of  this  proposal  himself,  he  gave  it  his  sanction 
as  the  sole  immediate  means  of  securing  the  triumph 
of  pure  social  democracy ;  and  John  Lane,  his  brother, 
was  forthwith  dispatched  to  Melbourne  with  the  new 
programme  in  his  pocket,  to  canvass  for  fresh  members, 
and  also  for  fresh  subscriptions.  He  succeeded  in 
obtaining  neither.  His  failure,  he  explained  on  his 
return,  had  been  due  to  two  causes.  One  was  what  he 
described  as  "  a  slump  in  Australian  socialism";  the 
other  was  the  fact  that  they,  whose  avowed  object  was 
to  escape  from  the  tyranny  of  employers,  were  about 
to  re-establish  on  their  own  account  the  accursed  thing 
themselves.  He  had  urged  on  the  objectors  that  the 
principles  of  pure  social  democracy,  and  the  doctrine 
that  all  men  are  equal  simply  because  they  are  men, 
were  applicable  to  white  men  only,  and  did  not  apply 


LANE'S   LAST  ATTEMPT  225 

K?,f*!?^'^'^^^^'''^?  T*^  "^^^  ^^^  were  black  or  yellow; 
but  the  long  and  the  short  of  it  was  that  his  arguments 
and  his  mission  had  been  in  vain.  guments 

wa?  h3lf  ^U^'r  *^^*T  ^''  enterprise  as  it  now  stood 
was  hopeless,  William  Lane  turned  round  on  his  fol- 
fe/"'  ^  informed  them,  like  a  Hebrew  prophet,  that 
their  rum  was  on  their  own  heads;  that  the  life-blood 
of  socialism  was  a  liymg  and  sustained  enthusiasm-an 

want^nr'^-1  'f  ^  ^^'  f,\  ^^^  '^^'  '^^'  ^^  ^^em  was 
wanting.      'As  for  me,"  he  said,   "I  can  work  with 

"thmiT  T?'  ^""u  ^T""^'^  y^"'"  *^e  proceeded, 
though  most  have  been  found  wanting,  there  are  yet 
a  chosen  few  who  are  men  after  my  own  heart."  These 
he  would  take  away  with  him,  and  he  and  they  together, 
the  majority  being  abandoned  to  their  fate,  would  pre' 
sently  build  up  elsewhere  a  Kingdom  of  Heaven  for 
themselves.  Of  the  abandoned  mljority,  most,  as  has 
been  said  already,  were  shipped  bick  to  Australia  by 

behindTn^  h  *^'  ^T'^^''  "u"^'  ^^'^''  ^^^e  remained 
of  NpI  A^  ^^T""""!^  u^""  substantial  farmers  on  parts 
of  New  Australia  which  were  granted  to  them  as  their 
own  property  But  the  story  of  Lane  and  his  remnant 
stil  remains  to  be  told.     It  forms  the  climax  of  a  drama 

wS  th'T^r!^  'H  '''^'^^l'^'  ^^  ^^  Aristophanic  farce 
with  the  fatalities  of  a  Sophoclean  tragedy. 

«  IZ^^  ^^l^fu^  ^^  .""T^  *^^*  ^^'^e  had  retreated  to 
a  portion  of  the  origmal  settlement  which  he  had  long 
been  coveting  as  the  choicest  for  his  own  exclusive  use 
This  was  wholly  untrue.  He  obtained  from  the  Para- 
guayan government  the  concession  of  a  new  tract  com- 
paratively sma  1,  called  Cosme,  and  there  in  the  wiX- 

hn  '  %^'''^  ^''  ?^^';^  ^^^^  ^^g^^'  with  unquenched 
hopes  their  work  of  construction  over  again.  They 
erected  a  prelimmary  hamlet-a  cluster  of  forlorn 
shanties,  adding  to  these,  as  the  heart  of  their  distribu- 
^ve  system,  the  inevitable  common  store,  sLSHt 
with  such  simple  goods  as  their  funds  enabled  theni  to 
purchase,  and  leaving  each  as  a  part  of  the  "  all  "  to 
'iraw  from  it  whatever  particular  articles  were  for  him 
or  for  her  necessary  The  faith  of  these  persons  in  th^ 
principle  of  -  each  for  all  "  was  plainly  a  liviW  W 
m  them  up  to  a  certain  point.    Whilst  waiting  for  the 


226    LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

dazzling  wealth  which  they  still  believed  to  be  imminent, 
it  enabled  them  to  bear  with  patience  conditions  of  the 
nudest  poverty — food  of  the  scantiest,  dwellings  that 
would  barely  shelter  them,  clothes  that  were  little  better 
than  carefully  mended  tatters.  But  even  in  these  elect 
Lane  had  occasion  to  observe  that  the  spirit  of  private 
gain  was  by  no  means  wholly  wanting.  For  example, 
by  the  women  constant  efforts  were  made  to  secure  from 
the  one  poor  store  better  clothing  or  more  of  it  than 
could  possibly  be  supplied  to  all.  He  was,  however,  still 
so  satisfied  that  the  true  socialist  spirit  would  completely 
triumph  in  the  end  that  he  presently  set  out  for  England, 
prophesying  a  quick  return  with  a  new  contingent  of 
members — crushed  victims  of  capitalism,  who  were  burn- 
ing to  exchange  slavery  for  freedom  and  impending 
opulence.  Within  limits  he  was  as  good  as  his  word. 
He  duly  returned  himself,  and  there  came,  visibly 
enough,  some  new  converts  along  with  him.  These, 
indeed,  might  have  been  much  more  numerous  had  he 
only  consented  to  add  free  love  to  his  programme ;  but 
they  could  not,  however  numerous,  have  created  on  their 
arrival  a  greater  sensation  than  they  did.  The  old 
members  were  as  wretched  and  as  ragged  as  ever,  but 
the  new  victims  of  capital  had  an  air  of  such  signal  pros- 
perity that  those  who  were  enjoying  economic  freedom 
already  could  at  first  sight  hardly  believe  them  real. 
The  feminine  victims,  in  particular,  were  such  figures 
of  frills  and  fashion  that  Lane  was  soon  the  spectator 
of  even  more  enthusiasm  than  he  wanted.  Every  woman 
amongst  his  old  adherents  was  glaring  at  her  new  sisters, 
and  was  eager,  we  need  not  suppose  to  tear  them  limb 
from  limb,  but  at  all  events  to  appropriate  the  best  of 
their  boots  and  blouses.  From  that  moment  there  was 
new  discord  in  Eden,  and  Lane,  who  had  thus  far  sur- 
vived discords  so  grave  and  many,  was  unable  to  com- 
pose this.  Having  admitted  that  socialism,  or  pure 
social  democracy,  had  difficulties  to  contend  with  which 
he  had  not  at  first  realised,  but  predicting  that,  never- 
theless, its  future  triumph  was  inevitable,  he  took  himself 
back  to  a  land  where  capitalism  still  was  rampant,  and 
sought  for  a  private  livelihood  in  the  offices  of  a  Mel- 
bourne newspaper. 


THE  MISSING   STIMULUS         227 

Of  all  the  secularist  experiments  m  sociaHsm,  as  at^ 
tempted  in  the  United  States,  it  has  already  been  said 
bnetly,  after  a  survey  of  the  most  important  of  them, 
that  their  failure  was  due  to  two  and  the  same  two  causes, 
both  of  them  inherent  in,  and  peculiar  to,  the  socialist 
scheme  as  such.  The  proximate  cause,  it  was  said,  was 
the  want  of  efficient  industrial  direction ;  but  the  primary 
cause  was  the  absence  of  any  industrial  motive  which 
could,  when  the  motive  of  preferential  gain  was  elimi. 
nated,  compel  any  regular  response  to  industrial  orders 
of  any  kind.  These  experiments  show  that,  if  we 
exclude  the  whip  of  the  taskmaster,  such  work  as  is 
requisite  for  the  success  of  a  socialist  polity  can,  under 
a  system  of  equal  rewards  for  all,  be  elicited  only  by  a 
passion  in  each  of  the  workers  for  some  object  which  is 
external  to  all  of  them  in  the  sense  that  the  work  of 
each  affects  his  individual  welfare,  whether  for  better  or 
worse,  to  a  degree  so  small  as  to  be  barely  appreciable 
by  himself.  This  is  precisely  the  conclusion  on  which 
Mr.  Shaw  insists,  and  from  which,  having  insisted  on  it 
he  attempts  in  vain  to  escape ;  and  this  is  precisely  the 
conclusion  of  which,  amongst  the  ruin  of  his  own 
projects.  Lane  had  at  last  a  vision  which  was  clearer 
even  than  Mr.  Shaw's.  Mr.  Shaw  calls  the  requisite 
passion  'a  sentiment."  Lane  gave  it  a  much  more 
adequate  name  when  he  described  it  as  a  passion  which 
must  not  fall  short  of  an  "  enthusiasm." 

Let  us  now,  with  the  experiment  of  Lane  before  us, 
take  the  five  together,  and  see  how  they  all  unite  in 
teaching  the  same  lesson. 


PARALYSED   MOTIVE 


m 


229 


CHAPTER   III 

THE   DETAILED  LESSONS   OF  EXPERIMENT 

With  regard  to  these  five  entirely  independent  experi- 
ments, the  most  obvious  fact  to  note  is  that  the  plot 
or  story  of  all,  as  though  they  were  Synoptic  Gospels, 
is  in  Substance,  if  not  in  every  detail,  the  same.  In  each 
case  we  have  a  group  of  human  beings,  nearly  all  of 
whom,  with  the  exception  of  the  Brook  Farm  venturers, 
were  drawn  from  the  upper  ranks  of  wage-paid  manual 
workers.  In  each  case  they  were  led  to  believe  that  the 
average  man  produces  from  three  to  four  times  as  much 
as  the  modern  employing  class,  in  the  way  of  wages, 
allots  him.  In  each  case  they  were  led  to  believe  that, 
when  once  the  employer  "  had  been  stricken  from  the 
categories  of  existence,"  and  the  labourers  had  access 
in  common  to  land  and  capital  of  their  own,  their  lot 
would  be  one  of  equal  and  almost  fabulous  affluence. 
In  each  case  they  left  the  employer  behind  them.  In 
each  case  they  were  provided  with  land  carefully  chosen, 
and  a  capital  sufficient  for  starting  those  basic  industries 
which,  having — such  was  their  hope — supplied  them  at 
once  with  comfort,  would  soon  be  followed  by  others 
productive  of  universal  wealth.  And  yet,  in  each  case, 
so  far  as  their  socialist  lives  were  concerned,  these 
dreamers  of  golden  dreams  ended  in  helpless  beggary. 
That  this  could  not  have  been  the  result,  as  some  persons 
pretended,  of  a  mere  series  of  errors  made  in  the  choice 
of  lands  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  in  each  case,  when  the 
socialist  community  was  dissolved,  a  certain  number  of 
the  ex-members — those  who  had  any  grit  in  them — 
restored  once  more  to  the  world  of  private  motive  and 
property,  began  on  those  selfsame  lands  to  make  an 
ordinary  peasant's  livelihood — some,  indeed,  to  lay  the 
foundations  of  considerable  and  enduring  fortunes.    The 

228 


mdustrial  paralysis  of  which,  so  long  as  they  submitted 
to  a  socialist  rule,  they  were  the  victims,  and  from 
which,  when  that  rule  was  ended,  they  forthwith  re- 
covered, was  the  visible  result  of  a  paralysis  of  industrial 
motive,  and  this  it  is  the  avowed  object  of  a  sociahst 
polity  to  produce.  It  consists  of  a  temporary  severing 
of  those  nerves  or  muscles  by  which  the  prospect  of 
unequal  gain  is  normally  connected  with  the  exercise  of 
unequal  effort,  and  a  replacing  of  such  prospective  gain 
by  the  prospective  gratification  of  a  vague  and  diffused 
sentiment  which,  though  not  wholly  fictitious,  has  no 
permanent  tendency  to  stimulate  those  prosaic  activities 
on  which  a  continuous  supply  of  even  the  necessaries  of 
life  depends. 

Every  chapter  in  the  history  of  all  these  experiments 
shows  this.  Thus,  for  example,  the  Owenites,  so  far  as 
their  lives  depended  on  their  own  produce,  would  have 
died  of  want  except  during  those  periods  for  which 
Owen  himself  consented  to  wield  the  powers  of  an  auto- 
crat, which  were  only  his  because  the  undertaking 
belonged  to  him,  and  he  could,  had  he  not  been  obeyed, 
have  done  at  any  moment  what  at  last  he  did,  and 
brought  the   entire   scheme   of  equal   distribution   and 

undivided  interests  "  to  an  end.  Whenever  he  trans- 
ferred the  control  of  affairs  to  Councils,  obedience  to 
which  was  a  matter  of  mere  socialist  sentiment,  there 
was  no  obedience  at  all.  Industry  lapsed  into  indo- 
lence. Consumption  outran  production,  and  want  once 
more  began. 

Of  the  cultured  idealists,  who  projected  the  Brook 
l^arm  experiment,  one,  looking  back  on  it,  said  with 
regretful  candour  that  its  failure  was  inevitable  from  the 
first.  Its  success,  he  said,  was  contingent  on  the  abso- 
lute supremacy  of  a  sentiment  which  has,  as  a  motive 
to  work,  no  actual  existence.  In  the  mere  fact  of  the 
family,  he  added,  "  we  have  an  element  so  subversive 
of  enthusiasm  for  general  association  that,  for  practical 
purposes,  the  two  cannot  co-exist." 

In  the  case  of  the  Wisconsin  Phalanx,  socialist  senti- 
ment was  for  a  time  more  operative,  but  was  finally 
extinguished  by  the  wretchedness  of  its  own  results. 
Indeed,  its  more  active  members  were  in  their  heart  of 


ill 


230     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

hearts  so  little  enamoured  of  equality,  as  an  end  in 
itself,  that  they  sought  to  increase  their  incomes  by 
wage-work  in  the  world  outside.  The  North  American 
Phalanx  owed  its  greater  longevity — and  such,  it  ap- 
pears, was  the  explanation  of  its  own  projectors — not 
to  the  driving  force  of  a  greater  desire  for  equality,  but 
rather  to  its  careful  concessions  to  the  spirit  of  private 
gain.  Moreover,  quite  apart  from  the  question  of  the 
desire  for  equality  as  a  motive,  many  of  the  members, 
long  before  its  end  was  imminent,  had  begun  to  express 
their  weariness  of  equality  as  an  experienced  thing ;  and 
one  of  their  number,  with  reference  both  to  that  body 
and  others,  subsequently  made  public,  as  the  results  of 
close  observation,  his  own  diagnosis  of  equalitarian 
sentiment  generally.  What  he  said  may  be  briefly 
summarised  thus. 

The  sentiment  in  favour  of  equality,  if  taken  in  the 
socialist  sense,  owes  much  of  its  vogue,  as  the  basis  of 
a  practical  polity,  to  a  certain  class  of  propagandists, 
to  whose  temper,  as  though  by  instinct,  that  of  the  mass 
is  always  ready  to  adjust  itself.  These  men  are  drawn, 
he  said,  from  a  class  which  is  quite  peculiar,  "  and  is 
always  to  be  found  floating  on  the  surface  of  any  com- 
plex society — a  body  of  discontented,  jealous,  indolent 
spirits,  disgusted  with  our  present  social  system,  not 
because  it  enchains  the  masses,  but  because  they  cannot 
render  it  subservient  to  their  own  private  ends.  This 
class,"  he  said,  "  as  experience  shows,  stands  ready  to 
mount  any  new  movement  that  promises  ease,  abun- 
dance and  individual  freedom;  it  has  entered  as  an 
active  element  into  all  these  socialist  ventures;  and 
then,  as  soon  as  it  becomes  evident  that  the  enterprise 
cannot  continue  to  support  men,  unless  everybody  works 
his  hardest,  and  in  strict  subservience  to  orders  embody- 
ing general  principles,  these  persons  raise  at  once  the 
old  cry  of  tyranny  and  oppression.  Anarchy  ensues,  and 
the  enterprise  goes  to  pieces." 

These  words,  which  were  used  with  reference  to  the 
American  experiments  generally,  and  to  one  experiment 
in  particular,  would  have  been  still  more  poignantly 
applicable  had  they  been  used  a  generation  later  with 
reference  to  the  experiment  of  Lane.     What  Lane  learnt 


TRUTH   UNDERLYING   ERROR     231 

from  experience — what  the  conduct  of  his  followers 
taught  him — was  this,  that  the  equalitarian  sentiment 
on  which  he,  taking  it  at  its  face  value,  relied  as  the 
driving  force  of  an  industry  by  which  all,  irrespective  of 
their  various  individual  efficiencies,  should  be  made  the 
possessors  of  equal  and  almost  fabulous  wealth,  was,  in 
so  far  as  it  existed,  a  sentiment  very  different  from  that 
which  he  himself  imagined.  This  sentiment  was  found 
by  him,  when  viewed  through  the  prism  of  experience, 
to  resolve  itself  into  three,  all  equally  incompatible  with 
the  achievement  of  their  professed  object,  one  being  a 
secret  impatience  of  the  burden  of  any  industry  what- 
ever ;  another  being  an  open  impatience  of  anything  like 
industrial  discipline ;  and  the  third  being  a  jealous  fear 
on  the  part  of  most  lest  some  should,  through  superior 
energy,  rise  to  any  position  which  would  overshadow 
their  own.  Sentiments  such  as  these  are  not  only  in- 
sufficient to  stimulate  the  production  of  any  such  wealth 
as  it  is  the  primary  promise  of  socialism  to  distribute 
equally  amongst  all,  but  as  Lane,  like  his  predecessors, 
found  out  to  his  cost,  they  render  the  maintenance  of 
even  a  tolerable  poverty  impossible. 

And  yet,  if  we  take  a  wider  view  of  the  matter — if  we 
take  the  sentiment  which,  identifying  each  with  all,  will 
tolerate  nothing  for  self  unless  all  alike  share  it — and  if 
we  consider  this  sentiment  as  applied,  not  to  any  planned 
experiments,  but  to  those  vicissitudes  of  life  which  are 
intended  or  planned  by  nobody,  we  shall  find  that  it  is 
far  from  being  altogether  a  dream.  We  shall  find  that, 
on  certain  occasions,  it  exerts  a  force  so  great  as  to  be 
clearly  measurable  by  the  dynamometer  of  precise 
results;  and,  thus  seeing  what  it  can  do,  we  shall  be 
better  able  to  sober  ourselves  by  a  definite  understanding 
of  what  it  cannot. 

That  this  sentiment  may  be  practically  operative  in 
certain  religious  sects  which  are  in  their  nature  excep- 
tional, and  which  aim  in  a  material  sense  at  nothing 
more  than  the  competence  which  is  necessarj'^  for  a  peni- 
tential peace,  has  been  pointed  out  already.  But  it  still 
remains  for  us  to  note  that  on  certain  exceptional  occa- 
sions it  is  actually  operative  likewise  amongst  ordinary 
men  and  women,  and  turns  them  for  a  time  into  socialists 


232     LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 

without  either  their  will  or  knowledge.  Of  this  fact  we 
have  a  trenchant  example  in  the  conduct  of  crews,  either 
rowing  to  save  themselves  in  the  boats  of  a  sinking  ship, 
or  struggling,  in  the  hope  of  rescue,  for  food  on  a  barren 
island.  The  objects  and  ambitions  of  all  are  here  reduced 
to  one — that  is  to  say,  a  bare  escape  from  death.  Even 
in  situations  such  as  these,  a  preferential  care  for  self 
sometimes  comes  to  the  surface  in  singularly  brutal 
forms;  but  when  the  persons  concerned  are  sufficiently 
few  in  number  to  constitute  an  undivided  flock,  all 
hedged  in  by  circumstances  from  which  there  is  no 
escape,  and  each  member  being  a  witness  of  the  struggles 
and  sufferings  of  the  rest,  a  sympathy  of  each  with  all 
becomes  constantly  so  acute  that  each  will  work  for  the 
others  as  though  their  lives  were  his  own,  the  strongest 
in  particular  being  stimulated  to  supreme  exertions  by 
the  spectacle  of  those  who  can  do  little  or  nothing  for 
themselves. 

But  desperate  situations  of  this  kind  are  not  only  in 
fact  exceptional.  They  are  the  precise  conditions  which 
socialism  aims  at  abolishing;  and  even  though  socialist 
experiments,  with  the  exception  of  one  detail,  have 
resulted  in  conditions  which  were  certainly  no  less  des- 
perate, these  have,  in  case  of  such  experiments  them- 
selves, entirely  failed  to  produce  that  self-identification 
of  each  with  the  equal  welfare  of  all  which  in  other 
emergencies  is,  as  a  rule,  conspicuous.  The  reason  is 
that,  when  socialism  has  been  attempted  in  practice, 
there  has  been  no  hedge  of  circumstance,  as  there  is  on 
barren  islands,  which  excludes  the  persons  concerned 
from  any  choice  but  the  choice  between  selfless  enthu- 
siasm and  death.  The  socialist  experimenters  have  had 
always  a  third  alternative — namely,  that  of  walking 
away,  and  pursuing  their  own  interest  under  circum- 
stances of  a  different  kind ;  and  this  was  the  very  alterna- 
tive which  they  all  in  the  end  adopted. 

The  actual  extent  and  the  limits  of  a  selfless  enthu- 
siasm for  others  may  be  further  illustrated  by  other 
examples,  which,  though  less  extreme,  are  of  wider  range 
than  these.  In  no  countries  is  a  generally  democratic 
sentiment  supposed  to  be  more  active  than  it  is  in 
America  and  Australia ;  and  this  sentiment  includes,  we 


PROVED   LIMITS   OF  ALTRUISM     233 

may  safely  say,  a  sympathy  with  human  suffering  and 
a  practical  desire  to  alleviate  it  on  the  part  of  multitudes 
who  are  not  sufferers  themselves.  Thus,  if  Japan  were 
visited  by  an  appalling  famine,  appeals  on  behalf  of  its 
victims  would  at  once  be  made  to  Australian  and 
American  sympathies,  and  to  no  class  of  appeal  would 
popular  response  be  larger  than  it  certainly  would  be  to 
this.  Nevertheless,  when  in  normal  times  the  Japanese 
have  evinced  a  desire,  by  working  for  themselves  in 
either  of  these  two  countries,  to  reach  a  higher  standard 
of  life  than  they  found  to  be  possible  at  home,  American 
and  Australian  sentiment,  the  sentiment  of  Labour  more 
particularly,  has  not  only  failed  to  welcome  them,  but 
has  actually  insisted  on  driving  them  back  to  con- 
ditions which,  as  measured  by  American  and  Australian 
standards,  are  poverty. 

Such  diffused  exhibitions  of  the  actual  extent  and 
limits  of  average  human  sympathy  are  merely  pheno- 
mena which,  from  the  Middle  Ages  onwards,  have  been 
recognised  by  Catholic  moralists  as  part  of  the  order  of 
nature.  The  sympathy  which,  in  respect  of  the  distribu- 
tion of  material  things,  is  possible  for  the  average  man, 
and  the  Christian  religion  demands  of  him,  is,  according 
to  them,  divisible  into  three  grades,  these  being  deter- 
mined by  the  circumstances  of  the  person  or  persons  by 
whom  the  "  all,"  as  objects  of  sympathy,  happen  to  be 
represented.  Let  the  "  all  "  be  represented  by  a  single 
person  A,  and  the  generalised  "  each  "  by  a  single  person 
B.  If  A  be  moderately  prosperous,  B,  though  much 
richer  than  he,  will  owe  him  nothing  but  a  sentiment  of 
general  amity.  If  A  be  in  difficulties  but  not  in  extreme 
distress,  it  will  be  meritorious  on  B's  part,  though  not 
obligatory,  to  use  his  wealth  in  giving  him  judicious  aid. 
If  A's  situation  would  be  desperate  unless  aid  were  forth- 
coming, it  will  then  be  obligatory  on  B  to  give  him  what 
aid  he  can. 

To  suppose  that  a  sentiment  proper  to  the  last  of  these 
three  cases  could  be  or  ought  to  be  raised  to  the  same 
pitch  by  the  others  is,  unless  we  resort  to  a  supposition 
more  ridiculous  still,  to  contemplate  a  change  in  human 
nature  which  would  render  peace  or  happiness  impossible 
for  any  human  being.     For  if  all  men  should  ever  grow 


234     LIMITS  OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

sensitive  to  such  an  extreme  degree  that  each  man 
bewailed  the  lot  of  all  other  men  as  miserable  whose 
incomes,  though  sufficient  for  life,  fell  short  of  his  own, 
even  the  poorest  classes  in  any  rich  country  like  England 
would  be  constantly  tortured  by  the  thought  of  countries 
like  Russia  and  China,  the  total  incomes  of  which,  if 
divided  equally  amongst  all,  would  still  leave  everybody 
poorer  than  the  least  skilled  English  labourer. 

But  the  matter  does  not  end  here.     If  human  sym- 
pathy grew  so  acute  as  this,  it  would  not  concern  itself 
with  matters  of  income  only.     Other  ills  would  remain 
independent  of  wealth  or  poverty,  from  the  pangs  of 
toothache  to  those  of  despised  or  bereaved  love ;  and  these, 
diffused  amongst  all  by  a  sympathetic  contagion,  would 
make  everybody  unable  to  smile  whilst  a  single  human 
being  was  weeping.     Every  bride  and  bridegroom  would 
have  to  wear  black  at  the  altar  for  those  who  at  the 
same  hour  would  inevitably  be  burying  their  dead,  and 
the  news  of  one  old  woman  with  a  toothache  in  Pekin 
would  cast  the  gloom  of  midnight  over  every  home  in 
Europe.     This  cecumenical  misery  would  be  curable  on 
one  supposition  only,  which  is  merely  the  logical  sequel 
of  the  root-supposition  of  the  socialists.     This  is  the  sup- 
position that,  if  sympathy  were  really  so  super-sensitive 
that  the  wants  and  sorrows  of  others  produced  affliction 
in  each  man  as  though  they  were  really  his  own,  the 
happiness  of  others  would  conversely  have  a  like  effect 
on  the  miserable.     In  that  case,  not  only  would  every 
bride  feel  her  happiness  blighted  by  the  thought  of  con- 
temporary widows,  but  every  widow  would  be  consoled 
for  the  loss  of  her  husband  if  on  her  way  to  his  funeral 
she  encountered  a  wedding-party.     Not  only  would  Mrs. 
Smith  be  robbed  of  all  satisfaction  in  the  silk  of  her 
Sunday  gown  by  the  thought  that  Mrs.  Jones,  her  neigh- 
bour, went  to  church  in  alpaca,  but  Mrs.  Jones,  as  her 
eyes  strayed  from  her  hymn-book,  would  be  filled  with 
satisfaction  by  the  spectacle  of  Mrs.  Smith  in  silk.     This 
last  supposition  is  one  in  which  not  even  socialists  would 
indulge — Lane,  as  we  have  seen,  discovered  its  fallacy 
for  himself — but  it  is  in  reality  not  more  absurd  than 
their  own. 

The  truth  is  that  a  certain  thickness  of  skin,  or  a 


COMMON-SENSE   ALTRUISM        235 

certain  sluggishness  of  the  sympathetic  imagination,  is 
necessary  for  the  mass  of  mankind  in  order  to  make  life 
tolerable,  just  as  a  certain  degree  of  obtuseness  in  the 
matter  of  hearing  is  necessary  to  protect  them  from 
sounds  that  would  otherwise  drive  them  mad;  and  that 
kind  of  super-sensitive  sympathy  which  will  not  be 
satisfied  till  all  men  are  not  only  removed  from  want,  but 
are  equal  in  wealth  also,  may  indeed  haunt  men's  minds 
as  a  sort  of  ideal  protest  against  certain  forms  of  in- 
equality, but  it  does  not  provoke,  or  even  tend  to  pro- 
voke, most  men  to  any  attempts  at  realising  an  ideal 
equality  which  they  in  their  hearts  view  with  repugnance, 
or  at  best  with  complete  apathy. 

To  suppose,  however,  that  a  sympathy  of  each  with 
the  lot  of  all  is  a  sentiment  which,  except  on  occasions 
of  rare  and  extreme  danger,  has  no  power  whatever  over 
the  social  lives  of  men,  would  be  graver  error  even  than 
that  of  the  socialists,  who  make  its  power  ridiculous  by 
supposing  it  to  be  greater  than  it  is.  Without  some 
such  sympathy,  some  quasi-socialist  sentiment,  demand- 
ing and  securing  equality  of  conditions  in  some  respects, 
there  could  be  no  such  thing  as  civilisation,  or  even  as 
a  coherent  tribe.  In  every  society  there  is  an  element 
of  socialism  and  socialist  sentiment.  If  men  have  neg- 
lected this  fact  hitherto,  they  have  merely  neglected  it 
because  they  took  it  for  granted.  One  of  the  earliest 
examples  of  a  socialist  institution  is  a  street.  One  of  the 
principal  modern  examples  of  a  socialist  institution  is 
the  Post  Office.  On  the  other  hand,  the  ultimate  process 
to  which  both  institutions  minister  is  the  growth  and 
vitality,  not  of  socialist  life  but  of  private.  A  socialist 
street  exists  to  give  access  to  private  houses.  The 
socialist  Post  Office  performs,  in  transmitting  letters,  a 
like  service  for  all ;  but  the  letters  themselves  are  private, 
indeed  most  of  them  are  secret  products,  and  minister, 
with  few  exceptions,  to  essentially  private  interests. 
That  is  to  say,  in  each  of  these  two  typical  cases  there 
are  two  factors,  two  principles,  two  sentiments  involved, 
and  the  error  of  all  socialists  is  that,  confining  their 
attention  to  one  of  these,  they  imagine  that  it  can 
operate  alone.  They  reason  like  builders  who  proposed 
to  complete  a  bridge  by  pulling  down  one  half  of  its  arch, 


I 


236     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

and  using  the  bricks  to  beautify  and  extend  the  other. 
If  they  would  but  realise  that  the  socialist  principle  in 
itself,  which  they  take  to  be  something  new,  is  no  new 
principle  at  all,  but  is  one  which   (as  ministering  to, 
and  assuming  the  action  of,  another)  must  always  exist 
in  any  complex  society,  and  that  the  sentiment  at  the 
back  of  it,  in  so  far  as  it  corresponds  with  anything 
actual,  is  normally  a  form  of  instinctive  common  sense, 
they  might  well  be  justified  by  existing  social  conditions 
in  their  attempts  to  rouse  this  sentiment  into  a  more 
alert  and  more  self-conscious  activity.     For,  as  has  been 
here  observed  with  reference  to  political  government, 
though  the  principles  of  oligarchy  and  democracy  are 
both  equally  necessary,  their  powers  need  not  be  always 
in  precisely  the  same  proportions.     As  the  circumstances 
of  any  nation  change,  it  will  sometimes  happen  that  for 
their  solution  a  greater  exercise  of  oligarchic  power  is 
necessary,  sometimes  a  greater  exercise  of  democratic, 
though  in  no  complex  society  will  either  be  operative 
alone.     Hence,  then,  if,  without  regard  to  their  details, 
the  principles  and  projects  of  socialism  are  taken  as 
representing  an  attempt  to  secure  for  the  democratic 
principle  a  greater  influence  in  some  respects  than,  at 
present,  it  actually  exerts,  there  is  one  strong  reason,  at 
all  events,  for  supposing  that  this  attempt  indicates  the 
actual  existence  of  social  mal-adjustments  of  some  kind, 
in  the  cure  of  which  the  democratic  principle  will  be  a 
signally  active  element.     The  reason  which  makes  this 
supposition  antecedently  probable  is  a  fact  analogous  to 
one  which  was  cited  by  Cardinal  Newman  as  a  proof  m 
itself  of  the  divine  vitality  of  the  Church.     This  fact  was 
the  scandalous  character  of  Popes  such  as  Leo  X,  m  spite 
of  which  the  Catholic  Church  survived.     The  same  argu- 
ment  is   applicable   to   the   principles   and   projects   of 
socialism.     Whenever  these  have  been  reduced  to  any 
definite  form,  they  have  shown  themselves,  m  one  way 
or  another,  so  inconsistent  either  with  the  technical  facts 
of  industry  or  with  the  actual  character  of  the  great 
masses  of  mankind— they  have,  moreover,  when  tested 
by  experiment,  always  ended  in  such  farcical  failures— 
that  the  unabated  though  vague  response  which  they 
still  continue  to  excite  amongst  masses  of  men  every- 


THE  VITAL  QUESTION 


237 


where  cannot  be  otherwise  than  a  proof  that  actual  evils 
exist,  against  which  these  principles  and  projects  are  a 
protest  and  a  call  for  help. 

To  discover  in  these  principles  and  projects  what  the 
residuum  of  actual  truth  may  be,  and  how  it  may  be 
developed  into  some  practicable  scheme  calculated  to 
allay  the  discontent  of  which  socialism  is  the  misleading 
symptom,  is  one  of  the  most  important  tasks  to  which 
the  practical  statesman  or  the  thinker  at  the  present 
time  can  address  himself.  In  the  following  chapters 
the  principle  of  "each  for  all,"  as  meaning  that,  without 
regard  to  the  facts  of  individual  production,  all  shall 
receive  equal  shares  of  the  produce— the  principle  sum- 
marised by  Mr.  Shaw  as  the  essence  of  scientific  social- 
ism, and  as  put  by  Lane  and  his  predecessors  to  the  test 
of  direct  experiment— shall  be  reviewed  with  reference 
to  the  bald  actualities  of  life;  and,  absurd  as  it  is  when 
taken  in  the  form  with  which  socialists  themselves  invest 
it,  we  shall  find  that  a  something  emerges  from  it  which 
is,  not  only  what  Americans  would  describe  as  a  "plain, 
practical  proposition,"  but  which  also  accords  more 
closely  with  the  actual  sentiments  of  those  who  at 
present,  for  want  of  better,  take  the  doctrinaires  of 
socialism  as  their  guides. 


i 


BOOK  V 

THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF   SANE  REFORM 

CHAPTER   I 

THE   IDEAL  MINIMUM   WAGE 

In  order  to  extract  the  truth  underlying  or  latent  in 
the  socialist  conception  of  a  sentiment  which,  without 
regard  to  the  facts  of  individual  production,  shall 
demand  and  secure  equality  in  the  distribution  of  the 
total  product,  it  is  necessary  to  realise  that  m  such  a 
conception  as  this,  an  absurdity  is  involved  even  greater 
and  more  radical  than  any  of  those  to  which  attention 
has  been  called  already.  •  v  . 

One   thing   at   once   is   evident,    and   even   socialists 
admit  this,  that  in  very  simple  communities,  consisting 
mainly  of  peasants  cultivating  their  own  plots,  the  con- 
ception  of   distribution   by   sentiment   would   have   no 
practical  meaning.     In  such  a  community  the  differences 
of  wealth  are  slight.      Each  man  and  his  household, 
either  by  direct  consumption  or  exchange   (the  latter 
process  being  hardly  less  simple  than  the  former),  visibly 
get  the  whole  of  their  own  product  between  them ;  and 
so  long  as  this  is  the  case  distributive  justice,  as  under- 
stood by  all,  will  be  satisfied.     The  idea  of  determining 
distribution,  not  by  the  facts  of  production,  but  by  moral 
or  social  sentiment,  acquires  an  intelligible  meaning  only 
when  the  mass  of  the  workers,  ceasing  to  work  in  isola- 
tion, co-operate  in  large  bands,  each  of  which  is  directed 
by  the  mind  of  a  non-labouring  master ;  and  when,  owing 
to  the  development  of  mind  as  a  productive  agent,  the 
members  of  the  master  class,  together  with  their  mental 
subordinates,  actually  come  to  produce,  quite  apart  from 

238 


A  CONFLICT   OF  SENTIMENTS      239 

what  they  may  steal,  incomparably  more  per  head  of 
their  small  number  than  what  is  or  could  possibly  be 
produced  by  any  unit  of  the  average  mass.  The  idea 
of  determining  distribution  by  the  dictates  of  a  general 
sentiment  which,  filling  the  hearts  of  all,  will  demand 
and  secure  equality,  necessarily  presupposes  inequalities 
of  some  conspicuous  kind  in  production,  for  otherwise 
there  would  be  little  or  nothing  for  such  a  general  senti- 
ment, as  an  equalising  agent,  to  do.  How  remote  from 
reality  is  the  supposition  that  any  such  sentiment  exists 
in  force  sufficient  to  accomplish  the  task  assigned  to  it, 
we  have  seen  already  by  reference  to  a  series  of  test 
experiments ;  but  it  remains  to  be  pointed  out  that  it  is 
not  only  inconsistent  with  facts,  but  that  the  very  con- 
ception of  It  IS  also  inconsistent  with  itself. 

If  sentiment  in  any  community  is  to  have  sufficient 
force   to   render  the   distribution   of   unequal   products 
equal,  what  is  really  required,  and  what  socialists  un- 
consciously postulate,  is  not  one  sentiment  animating 
all  alike,  but  two  sentiments  sharply  opposed  in  kind, 
though  conducing  to  the  same  end,  one  of  which  will 
animate  some  of  the  citizens,  whilst  the  other  animates 
the  rest.     For  unless  the  productive  efficiency  of  all  the 
citizens  IS  equal,  they  will  from  the  nature  of  things  be 
divisible  into  two  main  classes— the  men  who  produce 
more  than  the  average,  and  the  men  who  produce  less. 
Hence,  if  by  the  action  of  sentiment  the  distribution  of 
the  products  is  to  be  equalised,  the  sentiment  which  must 
animate  the  former  will  be  one  which  impels  them  to 
transfer  nearly  the  whole  of  their  own  products  to  other 
people ;  and  the  sentiment  which  must  animate  the  latter 
will  be  one  impelling  them  to  the  very  different,  and 
perhaps  less  arduous,  task  of  being  "  precious  to  human- 
ity "    by    demanding   this    transference    as    their    due. 
Socialism,  in  short,  as  a  scheme  for  equalising  incomes 
by  the  action  of  two  opposite  sentiments  severally  opera- 
tive m  two  contrasted  classes,  would  be  a  topsy-turvy 
reproduction  of  the  iniquity  which,  according  to  Marx, 
is  the  essence  of  the  existing  system.    Under  that  system, 
said  Marx,  the  few  live  on  the  efforts  of  the  many. 
Under  a  regime  of  sentimental  socialism,  the  many  would 
live  mainly  on  the  efforts  of  the  few.    Or,  if  socialists 


I  • 


240     LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 

should  think  this  statement  too  crude  in  its  candour, 
they  might  express  their  promises  more  delicately  by 
describing  a  socialist  polity  as  one  which  would  secure 
for  the  great  mass  of  its  citizens  indefinitely  more  than 
these  citizens  themselves  produce. 

It  may  well  be  thought  by  sober  and  sensible  people 
that  the  force  of  folly  can  go  no  farther  than  this.  And 
yet  in  this  very  promise,  and  even  in  the  detailed  sup- 
position that  some  sort  of  sentiment  exists  which  will 
in  some  near  future  bring  about  its  accomplishment, 
there  lurk  certain  elements  of  actuality  a  sane  recognition 
of  which  may  well  lead  to  far-reaching  modifications  of 
the  temper  and  actions  of  men  under  the  conditions 

which  exist  to-day.  .     ,  i   .• 

In  order  to  see  how  this  is,  let  us  begin  by  translating 
the  general  term  "  income  "  into  the  particular  term 
"  wages  " ;  for  when  socialists  talk  about  equalising,  and 
so  raising,  incomes,  the  incomes  which  they  have  in  view 
are,   as  we  have  just  seen,  the  incomes  of  the  great 
majority ;  and  under  the  existing  system,  in  all  civilised 
countries,  wages  form  the  incomes  and  represent  the 
material  circumstances  of  at  least  four-fifths'   of  the 
population.      Whenever    the    distribution    of    material 
things  is  discussed— whether  in  a  Papal  Encyclical  or 
on  the  platform  of  a  social  congress— the  question  of 
wages    is    that    towards    which    discussion    gravitates. 
Further,  though  the  question  of  wages  may  be  looked 
at  from  many  points  of  view,  it  is  always,  by  all  parties 
alike,    discussed   as   a   question   which   is   primarily    a 
question  of  quantity,  and  which,  being  so,  is  referable 
to  some  idea— or,  we  may  say,  to  some  sentiment— of 
justice.     Socialists  may  say,  if  they  like,  that  the  wage- 
earner  ought  in  justice  to  get,  not  only  the  full  value  of 
his  own  product,  but  more;  but  they,  like  everybody 
else,  will  maintain  that  the  typical  wage-earner  should 
at  all  events  get  as  much. 

Here,  then,  at  all  events,  is  one  point  of  agreement ; 
and  this  brings  us  back  to  the  question  of  how,  when  a 

1  This  proportion  does  not  hold  good  in  Russia,  Serbia,  Bulgaria  and 
certain  other  countries,  in  which  the  modern  industrial  system  is  but 
partially  developed,  and  which  are  the  poorest  countries  m  the  VV  estem 
world. 


THE   PERSONAL  PRODUCT         241 

multitude  of  wage-earners  work,  as  is  the  case  to-day, 
m  co-operation  with  one  another  and  also  with  a  common 
master,  we  can  measure  what  the  individual  wage-earner 
produces  m  his  own  person,  as  distinct  from  his  fellows 

nthir     °T?^       "uL  ^"'l  ^'■''™  ^^^  common  master  on  the 
other.     Now,  although,  when  men  work  collectively  and 
the  product  IS  collective  likewise,  we  cannot  do  what  we 
can  when  they  work  singly,  and  identify  the  product  of 
each  by  the  method  of  direct  observation,  it  has  been 
shown  m  an  earlier  chapter  that  it  is  measurable,  in 
principle  at  all  events,  by  a  method  no  less  valid.    What 
each  man  virtually  produces  is  so  much  of  the  collective 
product  as  would  cease  to  be  produced  if  his  own  efforts 
were  withdrawn,  or  so  much  as  is  added  to  it  if  his  efiorts, 
previously  absent,  are  added  to  those  of  some  given 
number  of  other  men.     This  method  of  measurement 
has  been  constantly  used  in  war-time  by  employers  when 
they  have  claimed  for  this  or  that  member  of  their 
staffs  exemption  from  military  service,  on  the  ground 
that  his  withdrawal  would  cripple  the  employer's  busi- 
ness to  this  or  to  that  precisely  specified  extent.     This 
method  IS  similarly  applicable  to  a  measurement  of  the 
respective  products  of  different  co-operating  classes,  such 
as  the  wage-earners  and  the  employers  of  a  country, 
each  class  being  taken  as  a  whole.     It  has  thus  been 
used  here  in  a  former  chapter,  when,  in  order  to  estimate 
roughly  the  actual  product  of  the  modern  employers  of 
ii-ngland,  a  comparison  was  made  between  the  product 
per  head  of  the  entire  working  population  as  it  is  at  the 
present  time,  with  what  it  was  when  scientific  employ- 
ment had   barely  outgrown  its  infancy.     In  the  case, 
however,  of  a  class,  such  as  the  wage-earners  as  a  whole 
It  IS  not  generally  practicable,  as  it  is  in  the  case  of  any 
employee  taken  singly,  to  remove  them  from  the  influence 
of  the  scientific  employer  altogether,  and  leave  them  to 
show  their  mettle  by  producing  what  they  can  for  them- 
selves.    Such  being  the  case,  then,  the  socialist  experi- 
ments reviewed  in  the  last  chapter  have  here  a  peculiar 
interest   quite   apart   from   their   consequences.      They 
show  that  those  who  devised  them  recognised  the  funda- 
mental validity  of  this  method  of  measurement  them- 
selves, and  their  experiments  were  deliberate  applications 


242     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

of   it   in   its   most   difficult   and   comprehensive   form. 
"  Our  aim,"  said  the  founders  of  the  North  American 
Phalanx,  "  is,  by  eliminating  the  employers  altogether, 
to  provide  an  index  of  what  the  masses,  as  such,  produce, 
and  to  show  that,  without  aid  or  guidance  from  any 
class   external   to   themselves,    they   may   produce   co- 
operatively all  the  means  of  life,  and  even  increase  the 
present  rate  of  production."     Lane  said  the  same  thing 
at  greater  length,  and,  so  far  as  it  went,  in  a  really 
scientific  way.     The  result  of  these  experiments,  as  we 
have  seen,  was  the  very  opposite  of  what  the  projectors 
anticipated.     It  showed  that  when  the  average  worker 
deprives  himself  of  the  aid  of  a  specially  able  directorate, 
the  total  product,  instead  of  being  maintained  or  in- 
creased, shrinks  to  a  fraction  of  what  it  was  when  the 
ability  of  the  directorate  was  operative,  this  fraction 
alone  being  his  true  personal  product.     We  need  not, 
however,  dwell  on  the  details  of  these  experiments  longer. 
What  immediately  concerns  us  here  is  not  that  they 
yielded  this  or  that  precise  result,  but  that  they  consti- 
tute emphatic  admissions  on  the  part  of  socialists  them- 
selves, that  out  of  the  collective  product  of  a  mass  of 
inter-acting  workers  it  is  perfectly  possible  to  identify 
certain  portions  or  values  as  the  personal  product  of 
particular  men  or  classes,  and  that  thus,  when  we  speak 
of  the  fraction  which,  whatever  its  precise  amount,  the 
wage-earner  himself  produces,  we  are  not  speaking  of 
any  fanciful  quantity,  but  of  one  which  in  actual  life 
is  potentially  measurable  with  quite  sufficient  exactitude. 
Let  us  take,  for  example,  some  industrial  group  con- 
sisting of  500  wage-earners  together  with  one  director, 
and  suppose  that  the  total   product  is  expressible  as 
X  plus  40,  X  being  what  the  wage-earners  produce  by 
their  own  personal  faculties,  and  40  being  the  product 
of  the  employer,  or  "  the  rent  of  his  directive  ability," 
in  the  sense  that  it  is  an  increment  which  comes  into 
being  when  he  directs,  and  when  he  ceases  to  direct 
disappears.     Thus  the  average  product  of  each  wage- 
earner  individually  will  be  x  divided  by  500,  and  the 
individual  product  of  the  director  will  be  40  divided  by 
1 — that  is  to  say,  40. 
Now,  it  is  obvious  that  the  system  of  oligarchy  which 


WAGES   OF  EQUIVALENCE         243 

the  authority  of  the  director  represents  would  never  have 
been  developed  at  all  unless  some  such  increment  had 
resulted  from  it,  which  went  as  a  gain  to  somebody. 
Let  us  suppose,  then,  that  the  whole  of  it  went  to  the 
employer  himself.  In  so  far  as  justice  demands  that 
each  man  shall  enjoy  the  whole  of  whatever  product  is 
contingent  on  his  own  exertions,  the  employer  in  securing 
the  whole  of  it  will  be  acting  with  perfect  justice.  On 
the  other  hand,  it  is  equally  evident  that  if,  by  abusing 
his  position,  he  appropriates  anything  more,  his  action 
will  be  grossly  unjust ;  for  the  "  more,"  which  must  come 
from  somewhere,  can  be  nothing  else  than  an  abstraction 
from  the  personal  product  of  the  wage-earner.  The 
wage-earner  would,  in  that  case,  by  submitting  his 
technical  efforts  to  the  control  of  another  person,  how- 
ever superior  to  himself,  get  less  for  his  own  consumption 
than  he  once  got,  or  might  get,  by  working  as  his  own 
niaster.  No  employer,  not  even  the  most  grasping,  if 
the  matter  were  plainly  put  to  him,  would  deny  that 
by  such  an  arrangement  every  sentiment  of  justice  was 
outraged. 

Here,  then,  we  have  at  once  a  standard  below  which, 
without  injustice,  no  wages  can  fall.     This  standard  is 
the  amount  which  a  man  now  working  as  a  wage-earner 
could  produce  for  himself,  either  by  working  in  complete 
independence,  or  else  as  a  member  of  some  group  of 
equals,  no  one  of  whom  exercised  any  greater  authority 
than  the  rest.     If  by  working  for  wages  under  an  em- 
ployer he  gets  less  than  this  he  is  robbed.     Let  us  sup- 
pose, however,  that  the  typical  wage-earner  does  not  get 
less  than  this.     Let  us  suppose  that  what  he  gets  as  a 
wage-earner  is  fully  equal  to  anything  which  he  could 
by  his  personal  powers  get  for  himself  otherwise.     How 
would  the  case  stand  then  ?     If  justice  relates  to  indus- 
trial facts  only,  all  pretence  that  the  man  was  robbed 
would  be  gone.     His  own  personal  powers,  whether  exer- 
cised under  a  master  or  otherwise,  would  vield  him  the 
same   return— namely,   the   whole   of   what   they   were 
capable   of  producing.      Pure   industrial   justice   would 
have  nothing  more  to  say. 

This  is,  however,  not  the  whole  of  the  story.     In  the 
first  place,  even  if,  in  a  strictly  material  sense,  the  inde- 


244    LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

pendent  worker,  by  being  converted  into  a  wage-earner, 
lost  nothing,  he  at  all  events,  in  a  material  sense,  gains 
nothing ;  and  in  the  second  place  he  would  lose  some- 
thing which,  though  not  material,  is  appreciable  none 
the  less.     What  he  would  lose  is  his  independence ;  and 
this  is  a  something  which,  other  things  being  equal,  he 
would,  to  say  the  least  of  it,  rather  have  than  not.     He 
would,  therefore,  through  the  wage-system,  if  he  found 
himself  compelled  to  submit  to  it,  be  obviously  a  net 
loser  to  a  very  appreciable  degree;  and  the  extent  ot 
his  loss  would  be  magnified  in  his  own  eyes  when  he  saw 
that,  by  this  same  system,  other  men  were  conspicuous 
gainers.     Without  overestimating  the  moral  sympathies 
of  mankind,  we  may  safely  say  that  the  situation  of  the 
wage-earners  generally,  as  represented  by  a  n^an  tnus 
circumstanced,    would    be    recognised    as    contrary    to 
justice,  not  by  those  only  who  suffered  from  the  existing 
system,  but  by  those  also  who  personally  did  nothing 
but  profit  by  it;  and  that,  even  amongst  the  latter,  a 
socialist  sentiment  would  develop  itself  which  demanded 
that  an  injustice  of  so  plain  a  kind  should  be  rectihed. 
What,  then,  if  stated  definitely,  would  such  a  demand 
mean  ?     If  it  were  not  a  demand  that  the  existing  system 
should  be  abolished,  it  could  only  be  a  demand  that 
those  persons  or  classes  who,  though  neither  gaining  nor 
losing  otherwise,  had  through  it  lost  an  independence 
which  they  might  still  conceivably  enjoy,  should  not 
merely  receive  as  wages  the  entire  value  of  their  own 
personal  products-which  is  what  they  presumably  would 
do  if  they  worked  as  their  own  masters— but  that  they 
should,  when  working  as  wage-earners,  receive  something 
more  as  well ;  this  extra  wage,  which  would  necessarily 
come  out  of  the  increment  produced  by  the  employers 
themselves,  being  of  such  an  amount  that  the  wage- 
earners'  loss  of  their  independence  might  be  reasonably 
taken  as  counterbalanced  by  it. 

But  however  evident  the  justice  of  such  a  demand 
miffht  be,  it  is  doubtful  whether  its  power  would  suffice 
for  the  accomplishment  of  its  own  object,  if  abstract  or 
ideal  justice,  and  nothing  more,  were  at  stake.  Ihe 
truth  is  that  all  men  have  naturally  a  sentimental  inclina- 
tion towards  the  Just;  but  in  most  men  it  tends  to 


WAGES   OF   COMPENSATION        245 

remain  an  inclination  and  nothing  more,  if  justice,  as 
related  to  any  concrete  question,  is  difficult  to  define 
precisely,  if  the  means  of  achieving  it  are  disputable, 
or  if  it  appears  to  threaten  any  loss  to  themselves,  or  is 
anyhow  not  closely  connected  with  their  own  immediate 
interests.  If,  however,  it  be  made  apparent  to  them 
that  their  own  self-interest  and  the  sentiment  for  justice 
coincide,  the  latter,  thus  liberated  from  all  impending 
influences,  will  acquire  that  practical  force  which,  as 
Lane  found  out  from  experience,  pure  socialist  sentiment 
when  put  to  the  test  lacks. 

This  is  signally  true  of  ideal  justice  to  wage-earners 
in  its  relation  to  those  persons — namely,  the  employing 
classes  and  their  allies — with  whose  self-interest  it  may 
at  first  sight  seem  most  likely  to  conflict.  To  such 
persons,  at  all  events,  whatever  it  may  be  to  others,  the 
existing  industrial  system  is  essentially  a  source  of  gain. 
Their  whole  fortunes  are  bound  up  with  it;  and,  if 
having  paid  the  wage-earners  the  full  and  fair  value  of 
what  the  wage-earners  themselves  produce,  they  are 
invited  on  sentimental  grounds  to  pay  them  something 
more  as  well,  their  natural  impulses  would  be,  whilst 
admitting  that  the  invitation  had  force  in  it  as  a  counsel 
of  ideal  perfection,  to  set  it  aside  as  a  counsel  too  perfect 
to  be  practicable.  But,  if  such  persons  will  consider 
their  situation  further,  they  will  see  that  their  own 
interest  in  the  existing  industrial  system  is  by  no  means 
limited  to  their  gains  from  it  at  this  or  that  given 
moment.  They  will  realise  that  their  interests  are  no 
less  closely  identified  with  a  reasonable  assurance  that 
this  system  shall  be  secure ;  and  no  system  can  be  secure 
if  the  majority  of  those  whose  activities  are  essential  to 
its  operation,  and  who  in  this  case  are  the  wage-earners, 
have  something  to  gain,  and  nothing  to  lose,  by  over- 
throwing it. 

Now,  if  wages  were  less,  and  were  known  by  the  wage- 
earners  to  be  so,  than  what  they  could  produce  inde- 
pendently by  their  own  unaided  powers,  the  system 
which  entailed  this  loss  on  them  would,  it  is  needless  to 
say,  be  the  object  of  their  unmixed  antagonism.  The 
tasks  which  it  imposed  on  them  they  would  execute  with 
a  sluggish  reluctance,  in  the  hope  that  by  thus  crippling 


246     LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 

it  they  would  bring  it  altogether  to  an  end ;  and  even  if 
their  wages  were  fully  equal  to  the  value  of  anything 
they  could  produce  independently,  the  sense  of  their  lost 
independence  would  suffice  to  engender  a  temper  in 
them,  perhaps  of  a  less  violent  but  of  a  no  less  hostile 
kind.  What  director  of  labour,  if  his  men  were  in  a 
temper  like  this,  could  feel  secure  from  one  year  to 
another  that  his  own  directive  ability  would  continue 
to  produce  anything?  His  business,  even  if  it  did  not 
collapse,  would  be  structurally  insecure,  and  would  be 
always  in  danger  of  collapsing.  If,  then,  with  this 
situation  confronting  him,  he  compensates  his  men  for 
their  sense  of  lost  independence  by  paying  them  an  extra 
wage — a  wage  which  is  over  and  above  the  industrial 
value  of  their  products,  and  thus  removes  from  their 
minds  all  positive  grounds  of  enmity — he  will  not  only 
be  doing  what  his  sentiments  have  already,  so  we  assume, 
suggested  to  him  as  an  act  of  justice,  but  he  will,  as  a 
business  man,  have  taken  a  step  essential  to  the  security 
of  his  own  fortunes,  and  will  enjoy  the  comfortable  sense 
of  being  a  just  man  also. 

But  although  this  extra  wage — this  compensation  for 
lost  independence — might  eliminate  from  the  temper  of 
his  employees  the  element  of  inevitable  enmity,  and 
indeed  do  all  that  abstract  justice  requires,  it  would  still 
be  insufficient  in  the  long  run  for  his  own  practical  pur- 
pose. It  is  true  that  the  employees,  this  extra  wage 
being  granted,  would  now  have  no  ground  for  feeling 
that  the  employer  and  the  system  represented  by  him 
did  them  any  positive  injury,  but  they  would  have  just 
as  little  ground  for  feeling  that  it  brought  them  any 
positive  good.  They  might  cease  for  a  time  to  have  any 
interest  in  its  overthrow,  but  they  would  be  just  as  far  as 
ever  from  being  interested  in  its  permanent  maintenance. 
Such  being  the  case,  in  the  employer's  own  private 
interest  a  second  supplement  would  be  needed  over  and 
above  the  value  of  what  the  wage-earners  themselves 
produced;  and  the  reason  why  it  would  be  needed  is 
this — that  a  system  whose  efficiency  and  undisturbed 
continuance  have  no  better  basis  than  complete  indiffer- 
ence on  the  part  of  the  majority  of  those  concerned  in 
it,  hardly  possesses  more  structural  strength  than  one 


THE   WAGES   OF   STABILITY       247 

whose  popular  basis  is  a  sentiment  of  unmixed  antago- 
nism. A  system  which  rests  on  the  indifference  of  the 
majority  of  those  concerned  in  it  is,  indeed,  in  equi- 
librium, but  the  equilibrium  is  not  stable ;  and  the  second 
extra  wage  will  be  necessary  in  order  to  render  the  con- 
dition of  the  wage-earners,  not  only  equal  to  the  best 
which  they  possibly  could  compass  for  themselves,  but 
so  definitely  and  indubitably  superior  to  it  that  any 
crippling  of  the  system  through  which  such  advantages 
were  secured  to  them  would  be  recognised  and  dreaded 
by  all  of  them  as  fraught  with  calamity  for  themselves. 

Thus  of  these  two  wage-sums,  each  of  which  is  some- 
thing in  excess  of  the  full  value  of  the  wage-earner's 
personal  product — of  the  product  which,  apart  from  the 
employer,  he  would  be  able  to  produce  by  himself — we 
may  call  the  first  the  Wages  of  Industrial  Equilibrium, 
and  we  may  call  the  second  the  Wages  of  Industrial 
Stability.  The  latter  would  constitute  for  the  wage- 
earners,  taken  collectively,  a  stake  in  the  existing  system 
analogous  to  a  stake  in  the  country — a  stake  which, 
though  smaller  in  the  case  of  each  wage-earner  as  an 
individual,  is  no  less  real  than  that  of  the  great  employer, 
and  which  is,  if  taken  collectively,  beyond  all  com- 
parison greater. 

Regarded,  then,  as  a  general  concept,  the  ideal  or 
typical  wage  which  mere  self-interest  would  agree  with 
the  sentiment  of  justice  in  prescribing  would  not  consist 
in  practice  of  three  separate  portions,  but  would  be 
found,  when  analysed,  to  be  a  compound  of  three  ele- 
ments.^ The  primary  element  we  may  call  the  Wages 
of  Economic  Equivalence,  this  being  prescribed  not  only 
by  industrial  justice,  but  also  by  the  self-interest  of  the 

*  An  Australian  correspondent,  writing  to  a  London  paper  in  July 
191 7  with  regard  to  wages,  mentions  that  Australian  wage-courts  deal 
with  the  just  wage  as  a  composite  quantity,  in  a  manner  not  unlike 
that  indicated  in  the  text.  "  The  basic  wage,"  he  says,  "  is  laid  down 
as  a  wage  which  will  enable  the  average  employee  to  renew  his  strength 
and  maintain  his  home  from  day  to  day.  The  secondary  wage  is  re- 
muneration for  gifts  and  qualifications  requisite  for  the  performance  of 
skilled  functions."  No  reference  is  made,  however,  to  the  principle 
insisted  on  in  the  text,  that  some  ultimate  reference  must  be  always 
implied  to  what  the  wage-earner  could  produce  for  himself,  if  he  worked 
as  his  own  master. 


248     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

wage-earners  and  the  employers  alike.  The  second, 
which  is  compensation  to  the  wage-earners  for  their  lost 
sense  of  independence,  is  prescribed  by  the  self-interest 
of  both  the  two  parties  likewise,  and  coincides  with  the 
demands  of  sympathetic  or  human  justice.  The  third, 
which,  when  added  to  the  others,  converts  the  whole 
into  a  wage  sufficient  to  ensure  stability,  not  only  coin- 
cides with  the  suggestions  of  political  or  social  justice, 
but  is  demanded  by  the  ultimate  self-interest  of  the 
employer  who  pays  it,  no  less  than  by  the  immediate 
self-interest  of  the  wage-earners  to  whom  it  is  paid. 

Thus  from  the  most  fatuous  of  the  doctrines  or  implica- 
tions of  socialism  there  emerge,  when  these  are  submitted 
to  dispassionate  but  sympathetic  analysis,  ideas  and 
principles  which  in  many  ways  closely  resemble  them 
even  in  their  most  unlikely  particulars,  and  impart  to 
them  a  vital  meaning  by  reducing  them  to  a  reasonable 
form,  just  as  a  scientific  inventor  might  reduce  Swift's 
dream  of  a  flying  island  to  an  aeroplane. 

This  will  become  yet  more  evident  when  our  analysis 
of  wages  is  concluded.  Meanwhile,  with  regard  to  mere 
sentiment  as  a  rocial  or  economic  force,  our  analysis  as 
thus  far  carried  will  suggest  the  following  question.  If 
the  demands  of  justice  in  relation  to  wages  coincide  with 
those  of  self-interest  to  the  extent  which  has  just  been 
indicated,  does  justice,  as  a  moral  or  socialist  sentiment, 
practically  demand  anything  which  diffused  self-interest 
would  not  demand  without  it  ?  And  to  this  question  it 
may  be  answered  that,  if  it  did  nothing  else,  justice,  by 
merely  repeating  what  self-interest  dictated,  would 
repeat  it  in  a  tone  or  language  which  would  carry  to 
many  minds  much  deeper  conviction ;  but,  if  our  analysis 
of  wages  as  a  quantitative  question  were  complete,  it 
could  hardly  be  said  that,  if  taken  as  an  independent 
force,  the  sentiment  of  justice  plays  a  larger  part  than 
this.  Our  analysis,  however,  is  as  yet  so  far  from  com-  ' 
plete  that  it  has,  if  taken  as  it  stands,  no  definite  relation 
to  concrete  facts  whatever;  and  when  we  come  to  con- 
sider it  as  susceptible  of  application  to  these,  the  inde- 
pendent functions  of  justice — or  we  may  say  if  we  like 
of  mere  socialist  sentiment — will  be  found  to  exceed 
anything  which  our  argument  has  as  yet  suggested. 


FACTS  AND   CONCEPTS 


249 


The  ideal  wage,  whether  as  the  just  wage  or  the  wage 
of  industrial  stability,  we  have  thus  far  treated  as  a 
general  concept  only ;  but,  when  we  come  to  translate  it 
into  terms  of  actual  life,  it  will  not  be  a  general  concept, 
but  some  particular  thing,  which,  as  we  shall  see,  varies 
according  to  particular  circumstances,  and  to  which  the 
relation  of  justice — of  moral  or  socialist  justice  as  distinct 
from  mere  self-interest — will  be  found  to  vary  also. 


l! 


CHAPTER   II 

MORALS,    WAGES   AND   SECURITY 

No  general  principle  relating  to  a  matter  like  wages 
wiU  have  any  practical  value  unless  we  are  able  in  any 
^oncreTe  c^^Js^to  express  its  demands  in  ternjs  of  some 
definite  pecuniary  amount.     Now,  m  any  concrete  case 
that  is  to  sav,  in  the  case  of  any  actual  country-the 
Imount  of  a^y  wage,  whether  this  be  i-t  or  un^s  , 
which  could  possibly  be  made  ^^"^^'f^J^^^^^^^^l 
«7hprp  between  two  definite  limits.     Ihe  lower  umii  is. 
f  wageTantHy  sufficient  to  keep  the  -ge^^^rner  in 
hare   bodilv  health,   and   we   may  call  this   VVages  oi 
Necessity!  'The  upper  limit  is,  in  the  case  o^  any  given 
nnnntrv    the  average  product  per  head  of  the  occupicu 
;rpulation  as'a  wh'ole^   Now  this  latter  fact,  though  no 
less  obvious  than  the  former,  makes  one  thing  clear 
Ih  ch  sISentalists  often  forget.     The  average  product 
r^er  head  of  different  populations  differs.     It  was  com- 
Pf^H    for  examnle    by  statisticians  towards  the  close 
Efthe  nrneteTnT  century  that,  if  the  national  incomes 
t  TJ^Jr.    Austria    Portugal,  Italy  and  Russia  had  been 

the    ^orresponuiiig  Hence,  if  a  iust  wage  bears  any 

';:S:'&^eri7il.J'^:^^un.  tUreti^ny  possibl. 
f^r  «r  it  cannot  be  any  absolute  sum  which  is  due  in 
ustke'to  all  workers  alike,  on  the  ground  that  they  all 
nfthem  are  workers  and  human  beings.  It  must  be  a 
:im  wWch!  in  each  particular  case,  is  due  to  them  on 

250 


MINIMUM  WAGE   AND   MANHOOD     251 

the  ground  that  they  are  citizens  of  some  particular 
country,  and  it  will  in  some  countries  be  twice,  three 
times,  four  times,  or  even  five  times  as  great  as  in  others. 
But  this  is  not  all.  The  just  wage,  whatever  its  amount 
may  be,  will  not  be  different  in  different  countries  only. 
It  will  in  the  same  country  be  different  for  different  men. 
For  the  purpose  of  momentary  illustration  the  assump- 
tion has  just  been  made  that,  in  any  given  country,  all 
the  wage-earners  are,  as  productive  agents,  equal.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  however,  their  respective  products 
vary,  and  the  barest  industrial  justice  will,  as  we  have 
seen  already,  demand  that  their  wages  shall  vary  in  like 
proportions.  By  no  one  is  this  latter  proposition  en- 
dorsed with  greater  emphasis  than  it  is  by  the  spokesmen 
of  specially  skilled  labour,  who  are  often  more  anxious 
to  maintain  the  graduation  of  wages  than  they  are  for 
the  moment  to  secure  an  immediate  increase.  Thus, 
whatever,  as  expressed  in  terms  of  some  general  average, 
the  ideally  just  wage  may  in  any  given  country  be, 
justice  will  mean  for  some  men  a  larger  wage  than  for 
others,  and  for  certain  of  these  others  it  will  necessarily 
mean  some  minimum;  and,  as  will  appear  when  the 
matter  is  considered  further,  it  is  with  the  ideal  minimum 
that  moral  or  sentimental  justice,  as  diverging  from  or 
transcending  self-interest,  is  mainly,  if  not  exclusively, 
concerned. 

With  regard  to  the  minimum  wage,  no  less  than  to  any 
other,  mere  self-interest  will  demand  that  it  constitutes 
a  wage  of  stability — that  besides  representing  the  value 
of  the  personal  product  of  the  wage-earner,  it  carries 
with  it  certain  extra  advantages,  sufficient  to  ensure  his 
attachment  to  the  system  under  which  he  receives  them. 
But  so  far  as  the  employer  is  actuated  by  self-interest 
only,  these  extra  advantages  might,  it  is  quite  conceiv- 
able, be  provided  by  him  in  kind,  just  as  well  as  in 
money.  They  might  take  the  form  oi  so  many  kegs 
of  whisky,  added  every  Saturday  night  to  so  many 
weekly  shillings;  and  so  long  as  the  whisky  kept  the 
wage-earner  in  a  good  temper,  deprived  him  of  any  wish 
to  strike,  and  did  not  make  him  incapable  of  doing  his 
work  on  Monday,  the  mere  self-interest  of  both  parties 
would  be  satisfied.     But  moral  justice,  though  it  might 


252     LIMITS   OF   PURE  DEMOCRACY 

not  demand  of  the  employer  any  greater  expenditure, 
would  arrive  at  the  sum  in  question,  not  indeed  by 
wholly,  but  by  largely  different  methods.     Admitting 
that  the  ideal  minimum  must  be  partly  measured  by 
reference  to  the  stability  of  the  industrial  system     it 
would  view  it  in  relation  to  something  else  as  well— a 
something  quite  incompatible  with  a  wage  which,  how- 
ever ample,  was  half  made  up  of  intoxicants.      This 
something  is  the  life  of  a  human  being  as  a  moral  end 
in  itself;   and  it  will,  as  thus  considered,  include  all 
those  faculties  and  impulses,  together  with  the  develop- 
ment and  satisfaction  of  them,  by  which  all  men  not 
subnormal  are  generically  distmguished  from  even  the 
highest  of  the  subhuman  animals.     It  includes  man  s 
spiritual  or  ideally  moral  impulses,  whether  these  are 
associated  with  any  definite  religion  or  no.     It  mclud^s 
his  capacity  for  the  great  primary  affections    for  some 
acquisition  of  knowledge,  for  the  exchange  of  thought, 
for  something  at  all  events  in  the  way  of  artistic  taste, 
and  for  ordinary  social  intercourse.     In  the  eyes,  then, 
of  moral   justice  the  minimum  wage  of  stability  wU 
represent,  not  merely  the  net  advantage  of  one  industria 
system   over   another.     It   will   represent  the   material 
means  by  which  even  the  least  efficient  of  men-the  men 
who  have  no  talents  but  such  as  are  virtually  "niversal-- 
may  secure,  if  they  use  these  reasonably,  a  life  which, 
as  an  end  in  itself,  is  worthy  of  human  bemgs. 

That  such  is  the  case  is  shown  clearly  enough  when 
the  logic   of  the   problem  is  expressed  in  terms  of  a 
religious  creed,  as  it  has,  for  example,  been  expressed 
bv  various  Catholic  thinkers  in  dealing  with  the  relation 
of  the  Church  to  the  industrial  conditions  of  to-day. 
Thus  the   two   Papal   Encyclicals  known   as       Rerum 
novarum  "  and  "  Graves  de  Communi     lay  it  down  that 
in  the  fixing  of  wages,  though  regard  must  always  be  had 
to  the  industrial  possibilities  of  the  time,  and  an  element 
must  always  be  present  of  pure  business  contract,     there 
must  nevertheless  always  underlie  the  contract  an  ele- 
ment of  natural  justice,  anterior  to  the  will  of  the  two 
parties  and  superior  to  it  " ;  and  it  is  further  laid  down 
that  the  object  of  such  "  anterior  justice  "  is  "  to  secure 
that  the  wages  of  the  worker,  even  when  these  are  no 


LIMITS   OF  MINIMUM 


253 


more  than  the  minimum,  shall  be  such  that  he  will  feel 
himself  to  be  not  a  mere  economic  implement,  but  a 
man  who  (in  living  a  life  of  human  relationships)  is  free 
to  devote  himself  to  the  attainment  of  the  final  ^and 
spiritual  good  for  which  we  all  came  into  the  world. 

Here  we  are  again  brought  back  into  the  regions  of 
prosaic  business.  The  bald  question  confronts  us  of  how 
a  minimum  wage  ideally  sufficient  for  these  moral  and 
spiritual  purposes,  and  also  sufficient  for  the  stability 
of  the  industrial  system  by  which  it  must  be  itself  pro- 
vided, can  be  expressed  in  precise  terms  of  pounds, 
shillings  and  pence.  What,  in  other  words,  is  the 
minimum  on  which  a  man  can  afford  to  be  a  man  ? 

Now,  for  the  simple  reason  which  has  been  pointed 
out  already,  that  the  range  of  possible  wages  differs  m 
different  countries,  the  question  admits  of  no  general 
answer.     It  has,   however,   been  rendered  much  more 
difficult  than  it  need  be  by  a  class  of  perverse  senti- 
mentalists who,  by  exaggerating  the  claims  of  justice, 
tend  to  divest  them  of  all  practical  meaning.     To  this 
error  many  thinkers  are   liable  whose   knowledge  and 
judgment  otherwise  entitle  them  to  sincere  respect ;  for 
if  we  allow  ourselves  to  be  guided  by  mere  moral  ima- 
ginations  of   what    might   be,    our   conceptions   of    an 
adequate  minimum  will  have  no  limits  at  all.     Thus  tw^o 
English  economists,  writing  shortly  before  or  after  the 
close  of  the  nineteenth  century,  have  gravely  committed 
themselves  to  the  assertion  that  if  the  whole  of  the  then 
income  of  England,  including  taxes  and  savings,  were 
equally  divided  amongst  all  for  the  purpose  of  annual 
spending,  each  man's  income  would  provide  him  with 
but  a  meagre  instalment  of  what,  for  its  full  develop- 
ment, the  nature  of  man  demands.     Now  what  do  such 
statements  mean?     The  only  sane  meaning  which  can 
possibly  be  read  into  them  is  a  vague  suggestion  that 
the  productive  powers  of  the  people  of  England  generally 
should,  to  an  indefinite  degree,  be  somehow  or  other 
increased ;  and  if  the  persons  by  whom  such  statements 
are  made  were  armed  with  some  practical  scheme  by  the 
adoption  of  which  a  result  such  as  this  might  be  accom- 
plished, they  might  be  justified  in  fomenting  discontent 
with  the  utmost  possibilities  of  the  present  as  a  means 


1 1 


\i 


254    LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

of  exciting  the  masses  to  some  definite  action  through 
which  some  ampler  lot  might  be  possible  for  them  m  an 
immediate  future.  But  so  long  as  the  persons  m  ques- 
tion have  no  such  schemes  in  their  pockets,  and  are  quite 
unable  to  indicate  anybody  else  who  has  one,  these 
inflated  estimates  of  the  minimum  to  which  every  man, 
as  a  man,  is  entitled,  can  do  nothing  but  manufacture 
a  general  mood  or  temper  which  will  of  necessity,  for 
nine  men  out  of  ten,  make  any  kind  of  content  with 
human  life  impossible.^  •  U4.  u 

Such  a  mood,  though  many  examples  of  it  might  be 
cited,  and  though  it  is  sufficiently  common  to  be  mis- 
chievous, is  no  doubt,  in  its  more  extreme  forms,  excep- 
tional ;  but  it  is  not  for  that  reason  any  the  less  instruc- 
tive ^  It  is  neither  more  nor  less  than  the  moral  and 
logical  consequence  of  that  sentimentality,  mainly  of 
middle-class  origin,  which  suggests  impossible  estimates 
of  what  justice  demands  for  all  men— estimates  winch 
tend  to  render,  in  the  judgment  of  those  affected  by 
them,  a  maximum  wage  hardly  less  inadequate  than 

a  minimum.  ^  .  .       n         ^^        u 

The  homely  truth— and  this  men  naturally  realise  when 

1  Of  this  mood  or  temper  a  very-  interesting  example  was  provided  in 
the  year  1917,  by  the  langua^^e  o/.certain  men  who  hgiired  as  the 
leaders  of  strikes  amongst  the  munition  workers  of  Shefhe  d.    Of  these 
men!  who  were  mostly  young  engineers,  there  was  one  who  expressed 
Se  sentiments  of  himself  and  his  fellows  thus  :  "  We  are  asked,    he 
said  ^"to  fight  for  our  homes.     Our  answer  is,  that  we  liave  no  homes 
to  fiffht  for      Tlie  best  homes  of  the  English  workers  to-day  are  in  our 
opiiin   no  better  than  dog-kennels,"  whilst  another  developed   the 
sentiments  of  his  colleague  thus  :  -  We  don't,"  he  said,     want  to  fight 
and  we  don't  want  to  work  either.    The  only  men  1  can  see  as  has  got 
any  money  don't  work  at  all."     These  young  men  were  allof  them 
earning  wages  far  in  excess  of  anything  which  an  equal  division  of 
the  entire  income  of  the  country  could  have  possibly  rendered  general 
only  forty  years  before;  and  yet,  despite  this  fact    they  were  more 
discontented  than  their  fathers,  and  were  discontented  in  a  far  more 

irratioiial  way.^^^^^  since  the  words  in  the  text  were  written,  has 
spread  like  a  conflagration  in  Russia,  and  has  been  the  despair  (for  the 
tfme  at  all  events)  of  the  more  rational  of  the  revolutionary  leaders 
The  Russian  correspondent  of  a  London  paper  reported  an  impassioned 
appeal  of  M.  Kerensky  to  the  masses,  urging  hem  not  to  waste  heir 
time  in  thinking  of  the  best  things  they  could  imagine,  but  to  strain 
ev^ry  nerve  in  Securing  the  best  things  which  it  was  possible  to  get. 


THE   NORMAL   LOT 


255 


no  germs  of  artificial  suggestion  disorder  their  common 
sense — is  that,  if  they  are  ever  to  be  contented  with 
their  material  circumstances  at  all,  they  must  adjust 
their  estimates  of  satisfactory  circumstances  to  facts. 
Hence,  unless  the  average  workers,  who  naturally  earn 
less  than  those  whose  skill  is  exceptional,  are  doomed 
by  the  nature  of  things  to  a  life  of  subhuman  misery, 
there  must,  in  any  given  country  and  at  any  given  time, 
be  a  certain  minimum  wage  which  will  lie  somewhere 
between  certain  definite  limits,  and  which  average  men, 
or  the  workers  of  least  efficiency,  will  recognise  and 
accept  as  just,  because  it  is  (the  largest  practically 
possible. 

If  we  suppose,  then,  that  in  any  given  country  such 
a  minimum  wage  has  been  fixed  which  at  once  repre- 
sents for  the  recipients  a  better  lot  than  would  be  theirs 
were  they  left  to  their  own  devices,  and  is  also  sufficient 
for  the  needs  of  a  reasonably  human  life,  the  fact  of  its 
being  so  recognised  will  not  mean  merely  a  recognition 
of  it  as  the  largest  minimum  possible.  It  will  mean  that 
the  lot  represented  by  it  is,  and  for  the  time  must  be,  the 
normal  human  lot,  with  which  every  man  ought  to  be 
content,  unless  by  exceptional  talent  of  one  sort  or 
another  he  is  able,  as  an  exception,  to  provide  himself 
with  some  addition  to  it.  The  only  question,  in  short, 
which  the  lot  of  those  receiving  such  a  wage  will  suggest 
will  be,  not  why  these  men  get  so  little,  but  why  anybody 
else  gets  more. 

The  minimum  lot,  however,  though  the  minimum  wage 
is  the  foundation  of  it,  is,  as  we  shall  see  presently,  not 
necessarily  determinable  by  the  minimum  wage  alone. 
Justice  and  self-interest  alike  will  prescribe  certain 
additions  to  it  which,  though  closely  connected  with 
wages,  belong  to  different  categories.  Of  these  we  shall 
speak  presently.  But,  so  far  as  mere  wages  are  con- 
cerned, moral  or  sentimental,  as  distinct  from  merely 
legal,  justice,  when  the  minimum  has  once  been  fixed, 
need  have  nothing  more  to  say.  For  when  we  turn  from 
the  workers  who  earn  the  minimum  to  those  of  greater 
efficiency  who,  in  varying  degrees,  earn  more,  there  is 
no  necessity  here  for  any  renewed  insistence  on  the  fact 
that  a  certain  minimum  is  due  to  all  workers  alike  on 


1. 1 


256     LIMITS  OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

the  ground  that  they  all  "ejiuman      The  wages  here 
in  question  will  in  any  case  be  more  than  t^  f ,  and  the 
larger  sum  will  include  the  less.     A  larger  sum  will  be 
ckfmed  b?  tWs  worker  and  that,  not  on  the  ground  that 
he Ta  mln,  but  on  the  ground  that  he  -  «  man  who^e 
special  productive  faculties  are,  as  measured  by  their 
Sts,  definitely  greater  than  t^e  faculties  posses  e^^^^^^ 
others.     What  this  excess  amounts  to  rmist  be  settlea 
by  technical  evidence  relatmg  exclusively  to  this  or  to 
that  case ;  and  all  that  justice  can  do  which  »*  has  not 
done  already  will  be  to  pronounce  as  *«  ^""^^  P^'J'^'^^^Yl 
man  that,  whatever  the  excess  may  come  to,  the  luu 
valCe  of  this  shall  be  included  in  the  wages  due  to  him. 
It   will   thus   be    seen   that,    when   Y^ges   exceed   the 
minTmum,  justice  divests  itself  o   -^^^'^^^^'.Zl'^^J^l' 
in  fixing  the  minimum,  one  of  the  ^i^?*  ,  '"P^™^; 
When  justice  enjoins  that  the  minimum  shall  not  be  less 
San  so  much,  there  is  always  in  any  such  judfrnef  ^^^ 
element    of    hvpothetical    compassion— compassion    tor 
Ee  whose  condition,  if  they  got  less,  ^ould  be  pitiable^ 
But  when  a  minimum  which  satisfies  justice  has  been 
?nce  definitely  secured,  the  element  «    eompf  .on;^^^ 
respect  of  any  higher  wage  disappears.    "  J"f '^^  «^^'^^| 

that  the  wages  of  some  exceptional  man  shall  be,  not  tne 
tnat  tne  ^^gcs  r  ^^^  ^^^^  ^ 

wou  d  be  p  ?^ble    (for  x  is   sufficient  to  remove  him 
beyond  the'^each  of  pity)   but  because  a.  pl^^^^^^^^^ 
auantitv  happens  to  be  the  value  of  this  particular  man  s 
S      Compassion  in  his  case  would  be,  not  justice,  but 
Tavourittm  •    and   even   when   in   fixing   the   mmimum 
ult'cfcalTs'compassion  to  its  aid,  it  aims  at  expungmg 
rver>4ing  which  could  possibly  form  an  excuse  ^o^he 
action  of  such  a  sentiment  afterwards      T«  s^Y  t^^s^^ 
merelv  to  sav  what  a  clear  recognition  of  facts  wouia 
tTrnnto  a  political  axiom-namely,  that  any  numerous 
c^ass     the   co-operation    of   which   is   essential    to    any 
industrial    system,    is    a    constant    cause    of    industria 
iSaSy  a^nd^anger  if  any  elements  provocative  of 
reasonable  compassion  survive  m  it. 

Let  us  suppose,  then,  that  so  far  as  ^eje  wa^^^  ^^^^ 
concerned-the  minimum  so  far  bemg  the  key  to  tne 


ECONOMIC   SECURITY 


257 


whole  situation — the  demands  both  of  moral  justice  and 
industrial  stability  are  satisfied.  But  even  if  so  much 
be  granted,  a  satisfactory  scale  of  payments  for  current 
labour  will  not  do  more  than  partly  cover  the  case. 
Account  must  be  taken  of  three  other  conditions,  the 
relation  of  one  of  which  to  the  minimum  wage  is  so 
intimate  that  it  ought  to  be  here  dealt  with  as  though 
the  two  were  inseparable,  the  second  and  the  third  being 
reserved  for  discussion  in  a  separate  chapter. 

The  nature  of  this  first  condition  may  be  briefly  ex- 
plained thus.  In  order  that  wages  under  a  system  of 
industrial  oligarchy  may  satisfy  the  demands  of  justice 
and  of  general  stability  likewise,  they  must,  let  it  be 
said  again,  include  not  only  the  equivalent  of  anything 
that  the  wage-earners  could  produce  by  themselves,  but 
certain  additions  also,  so  that  such  wages,  as  the  results 
of  the  oligarchic  system,  will  represent  for  the  wage- 
earners  a  balance  of  net  advantage.  Moreover,  of  such 
wages  one  essential  element  must  be  compensation  for 
the  independence  which  the  wage-earners  under  a  system 
of  oligarchy  lose.  If,  however,  with  regard  to  their 
broad  features,  we  contrast  this  oligarchic  system  with 
what  history  exhibits  as  its  democratic  alternative,  we 
shall  see  that  what  the  workers  lose  by  exchanging  the 
latter  for  the  former  is  not  independence  only.  Let  us 
take,  for  example,  a  peasant  cultivating  his  own  plot, 
and  compare  him  with  a  mechanic  working  for  wages  in 
a  factory.  The  product  of  the  peasant  may  be  worth 
fifteen  shillings  a  week,  the  wages  of  the  mechanic  may 
be  thirty  shillings ;  and  the  peasant,  in  becoming  a 
mechanic,  might  feel  that  a  doubled  income  more  than 
made  up  to  him  for  the  privilege,  which  he  had  to  sur- 
render, of  prescribing  the  details  of  his  own  task-work 
to  himself.  He  will,  however,  it  is  constantly  urged, 
have  lost  by  the  change,  not  his  technical  independence 
only,  but  something  else  as  well,  for  which  no  mere 
wages  can  compensate  him,  and  this  something  is 
security.  So  long  as  he  owned  the  materials  which 
render  production  possible — these  for  the  peasant  being 
land — he  could  always  produce  something,  although  it 
might  not  be  much;  whereas  if  he  works  for  wages,  no 
matter  how  ample,  he  may  any  day  be  dismissed,  and 


'  I 
i  I 


258     LIMITS  OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

for  some  indefinite  time  may  be  able  to  earn  nothing. 
This  contrast  is  very  often  exaggerated  (for  the  peasant 
is  not  secure  from  the  danger  of  bad  seasons),  but  there 
is  in  it  nevertheless  an  important  element  of  truth.     Ihe 
wage-earners,  in  losing  their  ownership  of  the  means  and 
materials  of  production,  have  increased  their  mcomes  as 
a  whole,  but  the  security  of  the  individual  income  has 
beln  very  considerably  diminished.     The  mere  fluctua- 
tions of  business,  apart  from  sickness  or  accident,  may 
anrday,  in  the  case  of  any  individual,  cut  off  his  income 
for  the  time  being  at  its  source-an  event  which  is  for 
the  working-owne?  impossible.     The  proportion,  indeed, 
of  workers  affected  by  such  calamities  may,  at  any  given 
?ime,  not  be  actually  more  than  five  out  of  every  hun- 
dred;  but  the  chance  of  their  occurrence  will,  in  count- 
less wage-naming  households,  do  much  to  counteract 
the  contentment  resulting  from  present  plenty.     It  will, 
indeed,  do  more.     It  will  tend  to  promote  amongst  con- 
siderable masses  of  a  population  the  Pef^l'^r  sense  or 
sentiment  which  socialists  describe  as       Proletarian. 
By  this  they  mean  the  consciousness  of  a  certain  eco- 
nomic insecurity  which  is  not  necessarily  connected  with 
inadequate  wages,  but  which  results  from,  and  is  for  the 
waee-earner  a  constant  reminder  of,  the  fact  that  the 
materials  and  implements  of  his  work  «/«  not  personally 
his  own,  and  that  his  access  to  them  bemg  thus  deter- 
mined by  persons  other  than  himself  these  persons  have 
^mehow  dispossessed  him  of  something  which  he  once 
eZyed      This  idea  of  dispossession,  as  the  socialists 
themselves  suggest  it,  is  in  many  ^e^pects  altogether  fal- 
lacious.     If   in   any   typical   country-let   us   say     lor 
examDle  England— we  take  the  wage-earners  as  they  are 
to-d^y  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  implements  and  ma- 
terials of  production  as  they  are  to-day  on  the  other,  it 
is  absolutely  absurd  to  say  that  there  ever  was  a  time 
when  the  wage-earners,  or  the  ordinary  workers,  were 
personally  in  possession  of  either.     The  materials  of  pro- 
duction are  represented  mainly  by  Land.     The  wage- 
earners  of  England  and  their  families  number  to-day 
nearly  thirty-five  million  persons.     In  the  days  when 
agriculture  was  the  principal  occupation  of  the  country, 


THE  RIGHT  TO  WORK 


259 


and  when  a  statutory  interest  in  the  soil  was  most  nearly 
universal,  the  total  population  did  not  exceed  four 
millions.  In  what  sense  can  some  thirty  additional 
millions  regard  themselves  as  dispossessed  of  a  limited 
geographical  area  which  had  never  been  possessed  by 
a  similar  body  at  any  time  ?  What  is  true  of  the  ma- 
terials of  production  is  true  of  the  implements  also.  The 
typical  implements  of  to-day,  which  are  vast  scientific 
mechanisms,  not  only  never  have  been,  but  by  no  possi- 
bility could  have  been,  possessed  by  each  unit  of  the 
mass  of  labourers  using  them.  It  is  true  that  a  thousand 
weavers  might,  as  equal  shareholders,  possess  the  plant 
of  a  great  mill  between  them;  but  this  fractional  form 
of  possession — this  possession  by  each  of  a  thousandth 
part  of  the  whole — would  not  be  the  kind  of  possession 
enjoyed  by  their  great-grandfathers,  each  of  whom, 
through  possession  of  his  own  hand-loom,  could  use  his 
implement  of  production  when  and  how  he  pleased. 
The  wage-earners  have  not  been  dispossessed  of  the 
main  implements  of  production  which  are  in  use  at  the 
present  day,  and  on  the  use  of  which  the  increase  in  their 
own  wages  depends.  They  have  not  been  dispossessed 
of  land  on  which,  in  their  present  numbers,  the  mass 
of  them  could  ever  have  maintained  themselves. 
Nevertheless,  development  of  the  very  conditions  which 
make  large  wages  possible  has  been  accompanied,  so  far 
as  the  individual  wage-earner  is  concerned,  by  a  certain 
insecurity  which  was  in  the  days  of  small  earnings  and 
diffused  ownership  absent ;  which  socialists,  though  they 
grossly  exaggerate  it,  are  right  in  regarding  as  a  very 
serious  evil,  and  which  thoughtful  persons  of  strong 
conservative  sympathies  have  come  to  recognise  as  a 
serious  evil  also. 

For  this  evil,  in  the  opinion  of  all  competent  thinkers, 
the  remedy  must  be  sought  in  one  or  the  other  of  the 
two  following  forms — either  in  some  form  of  insurance 
against  periods  of  involuntary  unemployment,  or  else 
in  some  statutory  recognition  of  what  is  called  the 
Right  to  Work.  These  two  schemes,  though  they  both 
have  the  same  object,  involve  or  imply  different  methods 
of  reaching  it.    A  system  of  insurance  would  protect  the 


260    LIMITS  OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 

willing  or  potential  worker  against  loss  of  income  through 
rossof  immediate  opportunity  of  -ork  by  guaranteemg 
him  a  livelihood  till  suitable  work  was  found.     A  recog 
nition  of  the  Right  to  Work  would  mvolve  an  ob^'g^t^n 
on  the  part  of  the  State  or  some  public  body  to  provide 
Wm  with  work  at  once  of  one  sort  or  anfheran^  pre- 
sumably to  pay  him  a  wage  proportionate  to  his  highest 
poTentill  efficiency,  whether  the  work  actually  found 
for  him  were  worth  such  a  wage  or  no.     Both  th^e 
schemes  are  beset  with  obvious  difficulties.     Any  scheme 
of  inTurance,  if  it  really  had  the  efiect  of  rendering  any 
man  who  happened  to  be  out  of  employment  as  well  off 
^s  he  would  be  when  doing  his  normal  work,  would 
naturalTv  tend  to  render  unemployment  popular,  and 
tht  toYomen?  the  evils  the  pains  of  which  it  was  mean 
to  neutralise.     Insurance,  however,  can,  as  experience 
shows    be  largely  carried  out  by  the  persons  concerned 
themselves ;  and,  all  of  them  being  interested  parties 
precautions' can  be  taken  by  their  own  general  v.gdan^^ 
Lainst  any  great  abuses  of  the  funds  which  they  have 
SselveTs^bscribed.     On  the  other  hand    the  Right 
to  Work,  as  recognised  and  guaranteed  by  the  Mate, 
though  much  more  logical  and  soundly  moral  in  theory 
is    bv  reason  of  its  greater  completeness,  beset  as  a 
p;ac4aT  scheme  by  difficulties  much  -T^!^  J«;"\>„d^^^^^^^^ 
Tt   is  loeicallv   and   morally  sounder   because,   msteaa 
of    pensfoS  idleness,    which    might    very    often    be 
voluntary    it  aims  at  providing  for  all  the  conditions 
of  continuous  industry ;  but,  for  reasons  already  men- 
tioned in  the  course  of  an  earlier  chapter  dealing  with 
DoUtical   government,   its   logical   development   would, 
fn  most  countries  at  all  events,  be  hampered  by  limits 
which    no    government    could    remove,    or    would    else 
depend  on  conditions  which  no  government  could  ensure 
Tn  countries  like  Australia  or  New  Zealand,  which  are 
ly:p\"Sly  occupied    the  State^^^^hJ -^^^^^^^^^^^  for 

Tp'osfrbra7;L\^sT;irt7o?:irg!n  land;  but  in 
nd  countries  such  as  England,  every  acre  of  whose 
iabk  S  is  occupied  and  used  already,  no  such  course 
is  possible. 


A  NATION'S  RIGHT  TO  WORK    261 

If    in    such    countries    the    State    is    to    provide    re- 
munerative work  for  every  one  of  its  citizens  who  are 
unable  to  find  such  work  for  themselves,  it  can,  as  Mill 
points  out,  fulfil  this  obligation  on  one  condition  only— 
on  condition  that  in  some  way  or  other  it  is  empowered 
to  limit  their  number.     It  might,  as  Mill  suggests,  con- 
ceivably   limit    their    number    by    legal    restraints    on 
marriage ;  it  might  do  so  by  forced  emigration.     In  any 
case  a  limitation  would  have  to  be  effected  soniehow. 
But  quite  apart  from   any   difficulties  connected  with 
increasing  numbers,  the  power  of  the  State  to  guarantee 
remunerative  work  for  everybody  is  limited  ultimately 
in  a  way  more  obvious  still.     It  is  contingent,  not  on 
the  mere  numbers  of  whatever  may  be  the  population 
in  question,  but  on  the  wealth  of  the  population  rela- 
tively to  its  numbers  also.     For  work  provided  by  the 
State  would  be  work  provided  only  because  none  other 
was  forthcoming.     It  would  be  a  kind  of  work  for  which 
there  was  no  natural  demand ;  and  the  payments  made 
by  the  State  for  it  would,  in  an  economic  sense,  be  merely 
a  drain  on  the  wealth  of  those  who  were  employed  nor- 
mally.    If  the  community  as  a  whole  was  prosperous, 
especially  if  its  wealth  were  increasing,  the  cost  of  State- 
paid  work  might  be  more  than  counterbalanced  by  its 
advantages.     But  if  the  wealth  of  any  community  were 
as  a  whole  declining,  no  system  of  State-paid  work,  no 
system  of  insurance  against  loss  by  unemployment  either, 
could  avert  the  doom  which  would  threaten,  not  the 
wacre-earners  only,  but  the  heads  of  those  enterprises 
also  out  of  the  gains  of  which  the  wages  were  paid. 
States  have  risen  and  fallen,  such  as  Carthage,  Venice, 
Florence,  and  will  rise  and  fall  again.     They  have  risen 
through  the  enterprise  of  their  rulers  and  the  answering 
activity  of  the  ruled,  whether  in  war,  in  industry,  or  in 
trade.     They  have  fallen  through  the  fortunes  of  war, 
through  the   rise  of  rival   industries,   or  some   gradual 
changes  in  the  trade  routes  of  the  world.     What  could 
State-paid  work,  what  could  any  system  of  insurance 
against   unemployment   do   to   avert   the   doom   which 
would,  in  cases  like  these,  threaten  the  wage-earners  and 
the  payers  of  wages  alike  ?    What  could  they  have  done 


262     LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

to    maintain   the    vanished    argosies    of   Venice,    or   to 
recreate  prosperity  amongst  the  ruins  of  Carthage  ? 

If,  however,  the  general  conditions  of  industrial  pros- 
perity be  given — namely,  an  harmonious  interaction  of 
oligarchy  and  democracy  on  the  one  hand,  and  a  wage- 
system  having  as  its  basis  a  just  minimum  on  the  other — 
either  of  these  devices,  namely,  insurance  against  un- 
employment or  a  statutory  right  to  work,  or  both  taken 
together,  might  accomplish,  or  go  far  towards  accom- 
plishing, the  result  which  is  here  in  question.      That 
result   is   the   provision   for   every   honest   and   willing 
worker,  not  only  of  a  wage  which  is  just  in  respect  of 
quantity,  but  also  a  permanent  opportunity  of  earning 
it,  or  else  some  sort  of  guarantee  that  if  the  opportunity 
on  this  or  on  that  occasion  is  not  at  once  forthcoming, 
the  worker,  meanwhile,  shall  not  suffer  in  consequence. 
The  achievement  of  such  a  result,  or  even  the  partial 
achievement  of  it,  would  be  tantamount,  in  its  effects 
on  the  wage-earners,  to  a  re-diffusion  of  small  industrial 
ownerships.     For,  in  the  case  of  the  working  owner— the 
hand-loom  weaver,  for  instance— his  earnings  being  a 
given  quantity,  the  ownership  of  the  implements  used 
by  him  is  materially  advantageous  or  even  perceptible 
to  himself  for  this  reason  only,  that  his  right  to  work 
or  his  opportunity  of  working  is  established  by  it.     If, 
then,  by  working  as  a  wage-earner  under  the  direction 
of  a  scientific  employer,  and  by  using  the  implements 
with  which  the  employer  provides  him,  he  not  only  earns 
far  more  than  he  ever  did  or  could  do  by  working  as  his 
own  master,  but  also  recovers  under  another  form  the 
permanent  opportunity  of  working  which  the  personal 
ownership  of  his  loom  or  of  any  other  implement  gave 
him,  the  balance  of  advantages  derived  by  him  from  his 
technical  status  of  wage-earner,  as  compared  with  those 
derivable  from  working  as  his  own  master  will,  in  respect 
of  his  mere  material  circumstances,  be  as  great  as  either 
moral  justice  or  his  own  self-interest  could  demand. 

But  even  if  we  assume  that  all  these  conditions  are 
fulfilled,  there  are,  as  has  been  said,  two  others,  which 
both  justice  and  self-interest  will  demand  for  the  wage- 
earner  likewise,  if  the  conditions  of  industrial  stability, 


MORAL  STATUS 


263 


so  far  as  he  is  concerned,  are  to  be  complete.  One  of 
these  is  distinct  from  mere  material  claims  altogether. 
It  relates  to  the  moral  esteem  due  to  him,  quite  apart 
from  his  wages,  as  a  member  of  the  wage-earning  class. 
The  other,  closely  connected  with  moral  esteem  likewise, 
relates  to  the  individual  wage-earner,  not  as  a  type  of  his 
class,  but  as  a  unit  of  it  who  is,  if  he  can,  entitled  to 
rise  out  of  it. 


CHAPTER   III 


THE   RIGHT  TO   RESPECT 


We  have  seen  that  in  estimating  the  amount  of  a  just 
minimum  wage  regard  must  be  had,  not  to  the  wage- 
earner's  physical  needs  only,  but  also  to  the  decency 
of  his  home  as  distinct  from  its  mere  comfort,  and  to  a 
reasonable  gratification  of  his  moral  and  other  human 
emotions.  Such  being  the  case,  then,  in  considering 
these  last,  we  have  thus  far  had  in  view  two  quantities 
only.  One  of  these  is  the  wage-earner,  who  is  a  moral 
and  emotional  being  as  well  as  a  mere  worker.  The 
other  is  some  aggregate  of  material  goods  or  conveniences 
— such  as  house-room,  chattels,  clothing,  food  and  drink, 
newspapers,  books,  tobacco,  means  of  amusement — which 
in  the  form  of  wages  is  offered  to  him  as  the  reward  of 
his  work,  the  opportunity  of  working  being  guaranteed 
to  him  at  the  same  time ;  and  if  our  argument  as  thus 
far  stated  were  complete,  the  wage-earner  would,  so  long 
as  these  goods  were  delivered  to  him,  feel  that  every 
debt  due  to  him  from  the  employer  or  from  society  had 
been  discharged.  If,  however,  we  take  men  as  they  are, 
experience  and  observation  will  show  us  that  amongst 
the  wage-earner's  natural  desires  there  is  one  which  no 
mere  wages,  however  just,  could  satisfy.  This  is  a  desire 
on  the  wage-earner's  part  in  respect  of  his  dealings  with 
the  employer,  for  what  we  may  call  just  treatment  as 
distinguished  from  just  payment. 

The  difference  between  these  two  things  and  the  im- 
portance of  it  were  illustrated  in  an  interesting  way  by 
a  letter  from  a  professional  agitator  which  was  addressed 
to,  and  published  in  The  TimeSf  towards  the  close  of  the 
year  1916.  It  related  to  a  wage  dispute — one  of  extreme 
bitterness — then  in  progress  in  the  South  Wales  coalfield, 
and  professed,  in  language  of  a  relatively  temperate 

264 


OVERBEARING  CONDUCT 


265 


kind,  to  enlighten  the  general  public  as  to  what  were  its 
main  causes.  The  ostensible  n.atter  at  issue  was  a 
matter  of  wages  only.  A  certain  wage  was,  by  a  stand- 
ing agreement,  due  to  the  miners  under  certain  trade 
conditions.  The  dispute  turned  on  the  question  of 
whether  or  no  these  contemplated  conditions  had  arisen, 
and  it  might  in  principle  have  been  settled  by  an  audit- 
ing of  the  employers'  books.  But  behind  any  facts 
connected  directly  with  wage-rates,  there  lay,  said  the 
writer,  one  of  a  much  more  general  kind.  This,  he  said, 
was  the  fact  that  the  personal  tone  or  attitude  adopted 
by  the  employers  towards  the  men  had  shown  for  many 
years  such  an  absence  of  all  "  good  will  "  that  the  men 
would  put  no  faith  in  the  employers'  books  if  they  saw 
them.  Indeed,  he  continued,  to  make  a  long  story  short, 
the  behaviour  of  the  employers  had  become  so  "  over- 
bearing " — such  was  the  word  in  which  the  essence  of 
their  offences  was  condensed  by  him — that  the  men  were 
resolved  to  put  up  with  it  no  longer. 

Now,  whatever  the  rights  or  the  wrongs  of  this  par- 
ticular case,  the  word  "overbearing"  gives  a  very 
sufficient  clue  to  the  kind  of  personal  treatment  which 
the  wage-earners  naturally  resent,  and  it  serves,  by  its 
implied  contrast,  as  a  clue  to  the  kind  of  treatment 
which,  whether  they  analyse  it  or  not,  they  claim 
naturally  as  their  due. 

What,  then,  as  applied  to  conduct,  does  the  word 
"  overbearing  "  mean  ?  It  is  a  word  in  very  common 
use.  It,  or  its  equivalents,  have  been  familiar  to  all 
men  in  all  ages,  and  the  kind  of  conduct  which  it  indi- 
cates is  no  invention  or  monopoly  of  the  industrial 
employers  of  to-day.  As  soon  as  we  begin  to  analyse  it, 
it  will  be  found  that  its  essential  element  is  an  implied 
denial  by  one  man  of  some  sort  of  equality  in  another 
which  the  latter  believes,  and  obstinately  feels  himself 
to  possess ;  and  a  belief  or  feeling  that  all  men  are  equal 
is,  in  some  sense,  and  always  has  been,  so  widely  dif- 
fused that  it  cannot,  in  the  case  of  the  wage-earners,  be 
set  down  as  a  foible  of  individual  vanity.  What,  then, 
we  must  ask  further,  is  the  nature  of  the  equality  the 
existence  of  which  this  feeling  or  belief  asserts  ? 

The  most  logical  explanation  of  its  nature  is  provided 


266    LIMITS   OF   PURE  DEMOCRACY 

by  the  supernatural  doctrine  that  every  human  being 
possesses  an  immortal  soul,  each  soul  bemg  in  God  s  eyes 
equally  precious,  and  that  all  men,  even  if  they  cannot 
explain  it,  carry  about  with  them  a  dim  eonsciousness 
of  this,     it  is  logically  explicable  also,  though  with  a 
logic  less  complete,  on  the  assumption  that  every  nian 
possesses  a  quasi-supernatural  conscience,  to  whose  die- 
tates  it  is  the  supreme  duty  of  all  men  equally  to  con- 
form.    But,  quite  apart  from  attempts  to  explain  it  by 
religious  or  mystical  theory,  a  sense  of  the  existence  in 
all  men,  unless  they  themselves  destroy  it,  of  some  moral 
and  equal  dignity,  is  a  sense  which,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
fs    liklthe  fense'of  self,  co-ex  tensive  with  the  ^luman 
race      It  is,  for  example,  expressed  in  the  celebrated 
ifne  of  Terence— //omo5^/m;  humani  nihil  a  me  ahenum 
puto-which,  as  St.  Augustine  says,  would  always  rouse 
the  plaudits  of  heathen  playgoers.     It  <^annot  be  sup- 
posed  that  these  "vain  and  ignorant  persons      (for  so 
St    Augustine  called  them)  had  any  definite  belief  m 
God,  the  soul,  or  conscience  as  the  Christian  world  under- 
stands them     but  the  residual  equality,  of  which  they 
p'roclaimed  their  recognition  as  existing  between  man 
and  man,  was  an  equality  of  relationship  to  something 
of  which  conscience  is  virtually  the  equivalent,  and  it 
will  for  practical  purposes  be  most  clearly  described  as 
the  equal  right  of  every  man  to  his  own  self-respect. 

The  kind  of  conduct,  then,  which  is  commonly  cal  ed 
"overbearing"  is,  in  the  last  analysis,  conduct  on  the 
part  of  one  man  towards  another  which  shows  a  want 
of  respect  for  the  respect  which  tlj^^^^her  man  entertains 
for  himself ;  and  the  correctness  of  this  definition,  and  its 
sSnal  pertinence  to  the  case  of  the  modern  employer 
and  the^  wage-earner,  is  curiously  illustrated  by  the  fact 
?hat  in  ancient  Athens  conduct  of  this  precise  kind  was 
recognised  as  a  legal  offence,  even  when  indulged  in  by 
a  master  towards  a  slave  who  was  in  law  his  chattel 
This  offence  was  technically  known  as  hubns-a  word 
denoting   conduct   which   is   injurious   to  the   suffering 
party,  not  because  it  inflicts  on  him  any  material  wrong 
(of  which  the  modern  economic  equivalent  would  be  the 
payment  of  insufficient  wages),  but  because  it  is  a  pro^ 


DANGERS  OF  BAD  TEMPER   267 

vocative  outrage  on  his  moral  estimate  of  himself.  In 
making  such  conduct  even  towards  a  slave  penal,  the 
object  of  the  Athenians  was  indeed  their  own  self-interest 
rather  than  moral  justice.  Their  object  was  to  render 
the  slaves  contented,  and  by  so  doing  to  promote  public 
tranquillity;  but  in  making  such  a  provision  they  bore 
witness  to  the  fact  that  a  due  respect  in  a  superior  for 
the  self-respect  of  the  humblest  is  one  of  the  main 
conditions  on  which  popular  contentment  rests.  And 
what  the  Athenian  recognised  as  true  even  with  regard 
to  slaves,  is  on  purely  utilitarian,  as  distinct  from  all 
moral  grounds,  still  more  vitally  true  with  regard  to  the 
wage-earners  of  to-day. 

There  are  two  main  reasons  of  a  purely  utilitarian  kind 
why  the  modern  employer  should  respect  the  self-respect 
of  the  wage-earner.  One  of  these,  though  its  range  is 
no  doubt  limited,  is  that  in  many  cases  a  wage-earner's 
self-respect  is  one  of  the  chief  qualities  for  which  the 
employer  values  him.  No  employer  would  assign  any 
position  of  trust  to  a  man  in  whose  character  he  knew 
self-respect  to  be  wanting;  and  any  employer  would  be 
blind  to  his  own  interests  if  he  did  not  respect  in  others 
the  principal  quality  which  rendered  them  of  value  to 
himself.  The  second  reason  relates  to  all  employees, 
whether  in  positions  of  trust  or  no.  The  main  general 
conditions  which  every  employer  desiderates  are,  firstly, 
a  calculable  peace  with  his  workmen  in  the  matter  of 
wages,  and,  secondly,  their  best  efficiency  in  the  doing 
of  the  work  prescribed  to  them;  and  unless  the  self- 
respect  of  his  workmen  is  respected  by  him  in  a  reason- 
able way,  he  will  jeopardise  his  own  chances  of  securing 
or  conserving  either. 

The  general  explanation  of  this  fact  may  be  given  in 
very  homely  language,  and  applies  to  all  human  relation- 
ships, the  domestic  as  well  as  the  industrial.  To  outrage 
the  self-respect  of  man,  woman,  or  child  is  the  surest  way 
of  putting  either  him  or  her  into  that  condition  of  mind 
known  as  "  a  bad  temper."  Thus  the  story  is  on  record 
of  a  child — the  daughter  of  a  very  eminent  person — 
who,  having  one  day  been  discovered  in  a  state  of  war 
with  her  brother,  a  year  younger,  she  explained  the 
matter   by   saying,    "  John   has   broken   my   dignity." 


268     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

Bad  temper  is,  indeed,  the  cause  o!  half  the  private 
tragedies  of  the  world ;  and  it  is  so  for  this  reason-that, 
If  if  be  more  than  a  passing  fit  of  irritation,  it  generally 
takes  th^  form  of  imputing  to  another  person  motives 
Ind  feeUngs  grotesque\  different  ^--"-^  invariably 
worse  than-those  by  which,  in  giving  ^^^f^^%^^^^ 
son  is  really  actuated.     If  a  husband,  agitated  by  the 
assaults  of  his  wife's  lap-dog,  spills  the  contents  of  a 
cream-Jug  over  the  silk  of  her  new  tea-gown   she   should 
she  view  the  act  through  the  medium  of  bad  temper, 
wm  declare  that  it  was  done  deliberately  for  the  mere 
Take  of  annoying  her.     If  next  day  ^^  shps  on  a  mat^^ 
and  deluges  her  with  the  contents  of  the  tea-pot,  sne 
wm  say,   and  begin  to  believe,  that   such  conduct  is 
part  of^a  scheme  for  making  her  whole  ^^e  miserable 
Tf  she  catches  him  next  day  in  a  corner  confiding  these 
Lnts  to  a  s^^^^^^^^  better  looking  than  herself    she 

wm  soon  add  infidelity  to  her  list  of  his  other  crim^^^^^ 
and  be  watching  for  evidence  on  the  strength  of  which 
to  divorce  him.     So  long  as  such  a  temper  lasted  m  her, 
no  reco;"^^^        by  appeal  to  facts  would.be  possible 
to  she  would  have  lost  all  power  of  discernmg  what  the 

^tnl  whSrtrue  of  individuals  is  true  also  of  classes 
If  the  wage-earners  of  the  modern  world  are  treated  by 
the  employers  generally  with  such  a  want  of  personal 
consStion  as  to  put  them  into  a  mood  of  chronic  and 
mused  resentment:  the  conduct  of  the  employers  other- 
wS-?hat  is  to  say,  in  matters  of  wages  and  te^^^^^^^^^^ 
disciDline— however   fair   it   may   be,   will    be   pre  eon 
demned   by   them,    and   construed   into   an   imaginary" 
See    aglinst   themselves.     It   should     therefore     be 
evident  to  any  intelligent  employer  that,  if  what  he 
wishes  for  is  industrial  peace  and  prosperity,  he  must 
Tot  regard  the  debt  which  he  owes  the  ^age-earners  as 
one  which  can  be  liquidated  by  ]ust  wages  alone,  but 
ZtttuT.lso,  ^y  his  P-onal  behav.^^^^^^^^^ 
them,  pay  a  debt  of  fellow-feeling  to  a  self-respect  on 
S  part,  of  which  no  men  morally  honest  could,  if 
thev  would,  divest  themselves. 

In  rheory,  at  all  events,  the  matter  is  thus  far  plam. 
Here     however,    in   practice    there    arises    an    obvious 


GRADUATIONS   OF   RESPECT       269 

difficulty.     Since  this  self-respect  of  the  wage-earners  is 
a  sentiment  a  respectful  recognition  of  which  is  owed 
by  the  employer  to  all  his  wage-earners  equally,  the 
peculiar  quality  in  themselves  by  which  their  self-respect 
is  excited  must  be  a  quality  which  they  all  possess  in 
substantially  the  same  degree.    If  any  man's  own  respect 
for  his  own  particular  manhood  is  held  by  him  to  deserve 
respect  from  an  employer  or  from  anybody  else,  which 
could  not  be  accorded  indiscriminately  to  the  self-respect 
of  all,  he  must  hold  this  opinion  on  the  ground  that, 
besides  possessing  the  quality  which  imparts  a  dignity 
to  the  lives  of  all  human  beings  alike,  he  personally  pos- 
sesses others,  which  exist  in  some  men  only.     If,  more- 
over, his  estimate  of  his  own  deserts  is  to  be  taken 
seriously  by  others,  the  exceptional  qualities  which  he 
thus  attributes  to  himself  must  be  qualities  which  really 
exist  in  him,  and  correspond  to  his  own  valuation  of 
them.     If  they  do  not — if  they  exist  in  his  imagination 
only — his  own  self-respect  will  be  not  self-respect  at  all, 
but  vanity,  or  self-consequence,  or  self-importance ;  and 
the  conduct  of  those  who  ignore,  instead  of  respecting 
it,  will  not  be  "  overbearing  ";  on  the  contrary,  it  will 
be  severely  kind,  or — which  is  still  more  to  the  point — 
it  will  in  any  case  be  inevitable.     A  bad  fiddler's  respect 
for  himself  as  a  man  may  deserve  as  much  respect  as  a 
good  fiddler's,  but 'the  bad  fiddler  would  be  absurdly 
self-important  if  he  thought  that  his  fiddling  deserved 
the  same  attention. 

The  same  argument  applies  to  the  moral  or  social  debt 

which,  as  from  one  set  of  human  beings  to  another,  is 

due  from  the  employers  to  the  wage-earners  in  the  way 

of  personal  treatment.     The  kind  of  respect  which  is  due 

to  them  because  they  are  men — and  the  importance  of 

this  debt  can  hardly  be  overestimated — is  due  to  them 

for  the  one  reason,  and  the  one  reason  only,  that  it  has 

its  basis  in  certain  actual  facts,  and  it  is  important  only 

in  so  far  as  it  corresponds  to  these.    Whether  as  a  natural 

fact  or  as  a  supernatural  fact,  all  men,  just  as  truly  as 

they  all  have  a  nervous  system,  have,  though  it  is  often 

subconscious,  a  certain  self-respect  which  rests  on  no 

claims  to  any  special  efficiency,  which  is  much  more 

nearly  akin  to  modesty  than  it  is  to  vanity,  which 


270    LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

responds  to  fair  recognition  like  a  horse  to  a  sympathetic 
rider,  but  which  is  at  the  same  time  very  easily  wounded 
and  when  it  is  wounded,  either  by  direct  afiront  or  by 
not  being  reasonably  satisfied,  it  converts  itself  into  a 
spirit  which  will  not  be  satisfied  with  anything. 

If,  then,  any  harmonious  co-operation  between  the  two 
classes  is  to  be  possible— between  the  employers  and  the 
empToyed-between  the  representatives  of  the  oligarchic 
principle  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  representatives  of  the 
democratic  principle  on  the  other-the  former  must  pay 
to  the  latter,  not  one  debt  only,  but  two.     They  must 
not  only  pay  to  the  wage-earners  a  debt  which  expresses 
the  technkal  the  industrial,  or  the  material  facts  of  the 
situation.     They  must  pay  a  second  debt  also,  in  the 
way  of  a  personal  behaviour  which  expresses  a  recog- 
nWon  of  the  moral  facts  as  well;  and  it  is  only  by  thus 
discharging  the  moral  claims  of  the  wage-earners  m  so 
far  as  these  rest  on  facts,  that  the  danger  arising    rom 
claims,  at  once  moral  and  material,  which  are  out  of 
accOTd  with  facts,  and  which  nothing  could  satisfy,  can 

^Xt^as^yet  we  have  dealt  with  one  half  of  the  question 
only.     It  remains  to  be  noted  that  this  moral  debt  must 
be  mutual.     If  the  behaviour  of  the  employers  to  the 
wase-earners  is  to  be  based  on,  and  to  express  a  recog- 
nition of  actual  facts,  the  behaviour  of  the  wage-earners 
to  the  employers  must  be  based  on,  and  express  a  recog- 
nition of  actual  facts  likewise ;  and  however  completely 
the  behaviour  of  each  class  to  the  other  may  express  the 
rnoral   equality   which   actually   exists   between   them 
Certain  inequalities  will  persist,   a  like  recognition  of 
which  will  be  necessary  for  the  same  reason.     The  tech- 
nical function  of  the  employer  is  to  f^^  «J^^^'"' *"f  i**-^ 
function  of  the  wage-earner  is  to  obey  them ;  and  this 
nequality  is  not  the  result  of  accident      Any  employer 
who  has  built  up  a  great  business  has  done  what  thou- 
sands attempt  to  do,  and  what  only  a  few  can  do.     His 
success  and  the  maintenance  of  it  are  due  (as  a  sociahst 
writer  already  quoted  admits)  to  the  fact  that  he  is  the 
«  natural  monopolist  of  some  special  business  ability     , 
and   all   such   ability,   when  exercised,   is   in   the   last 
analysis  an  application  of  talents  and  energies,  which  are 


CONTEMPT  FOR  WORK 


271 


conspicuous  only  in  a  few,  to  the  task  of  directing  and 
co-ordinating  the  operations  of  many,  in  whom  such 
gifts  are  absent,  or  present  only  in  a  much  smaller 
degree.  If,  then,  for  the  purpose  of  securing  co-operative 
harmony  a  personal  behaviour  is  due  from  one  party  to 
the  other  which  recognises  vital  equalities  in  so  far  as 
these  exist,  this  primary  element  of  behaviour  must 
necessarily  be  combined  with  a  second,  by  which  equally 
real  inequalities  will  be  recognised  no  less  plainly.  If 
men  who  are  unequal  in  their  relations  to  any  practical 
enterprise  mimic  a  behaviour,  and  cultivate  a  mood  of 
mind  which  imply  that  they  are,  in  these  particular 
relations  equals,  they  are  reducing  life  to  a  foolish  game 
of  pretence,  which  will  bring  them  into  constant  collision 
with  its  most  fundamental  facts;  and  co-operative  har- 
mony will  be  farther  oft  than  ever. 

But  although  the  ideal  behaviour  of  each  of  these 
classes  to  the  other  can  be  indicated  clearly  enough  as 
a  matter  of  general  principle,  it  is  impossible,  even  by 
way  of  suggestion,  to  reduce  its  details  to  any  precise 
code.  Nobody  unfamiliar  with  what  goes  by  the  name 
of  "  Society  "  will  enable  himself  to  pass  muster  as  a 
member  of  it  by  reading  a  book  on  etiquette  before  he 
goes  out  to  dinner.  The  one  thing  needful,  which  no 
such  book  could  teach  him,  is  a  certain  something  which 
can  only  come  from  habit,  and  from  a  host  of  subcon- 
scious associations  which  render  his  sympathies  kin  to 
the  sympathies  of  those  around  him.  Similarly,  the 
personal  behaviour  accorded  by  the  two  great  classes, 
the  employers  and  the  wage-earners,  to  one  another 
must,  if  it  is  to  answer  the  purpose  of  securing  so- 
operative  harmony,  have  at  the  back  of  it  some  feeling 
or  sympathy,  which  alone  gives  it  its  value,  which  alone 
can  prescribe  its  details,  and  for  which  no  calculated 
conformity  to  any  code  could  be  a  substitute.  The 
efficiency  of  such  behaviour  depends,  not  on  its  forms, 
but  on  the  spirit  of  which  it  is  the  vehicle ;  and  its  spirit 
will  be  best  understood  by  considering,  as  a  matter  of 
history,  the  most  familiar  manifestations  of  the  over- 
bearing behaviour  which  is  its  opposite. 

Of  overbearing  behaviour  towards  industrial  workers 
the  most  familiar  historical  example  is  to  be  found  in 


272     LIMITS  OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

pre-revolutionary  France;  but  Franc^'  j^^^^^^^ 

ll  its  then  ruling  classes    ^f  but  X^^^Ui^.tion 

which,    n  one  form  on  another,  »s  as  oiu  a 

generally,  for  all  who  worseu  '"  f,  ,  j^    but 

gain,  the  latter  comprising,  not  the  '^bourers  omy, 
with  a  few  exceptions,  the  employing  classes  as  weu. 

matter  of  mere  behaviour.     It  was  eniDoaieu  m 

for    certain   theoretical    purposes    this    suDsmuno" 
abour  for  the  man  who  labours  is  necessary.     I"  so  far 
If  rare  concerned  with  the  process  oivro^on^^y, 

^f  nc*T^\\f\\  "  would  be  needed  m  tnis  case,  anu      » 


RESPECT  FOR  MANHOOD 


273 


things  on  the  part  of  the  employing  classes  from  which 
the  image  of  the  labourer  as  a  man  had  actually,  for 
practical  purposes,  disappeared. 

This  result  may  in  part,  at  least,  be  explained  by  the 
fact  that  in  proportion  as  the  number  of  labourers  whose 
work  was  directed  by  a  single  brain  increased,  as  the 
business  of  directing  them  became  more  abstruse  and 
complex,  and  the  directions  had  to  reach  the  labourers 
through  a  growing  number  of  intermediaries,  the  person- 
alities of  the  labourers  became  necessarily  more  remote 
from  the  great  modern  employer  than  they  were  from 
his  typical  predecessor,  who  worked  by  rule  of  thumb, 
who  could  see  all  his  men  at  a  glance,  and  could  talk  to 
each  individually  in  the  course  of  a  single  morning.  But 
the  moral  fact  remains  that  the  increasing  intellectual- 
isation  of  industry  has  been  accompanied,  in  the  persons 
of  the  employers,  by  a  certain  defect  of  vision,  which, 
though  leaving  their  employees  visible  to  them,  perhaps 
more  clearly  than  ever,  as  technical  mechanisms  of  so 
many  kinds  and  qualities,  has  rendered  their  manhood, 
as  such,  a  hardly  distinguishable  shadow.  And  this 
general  fact  has  a  natural  tendency  to  express  itself  in 
the  temper,  the  mood,  the  behaviour,  not  only  of  one 
of  the  two  parties  concerned,  but  of  both.  In  each  case 
the  behaviour  in  question  corresponds  to  what  is  meant 
by  "  overbearing,"  in  the  sense  that  it  implies  a  dis- 
regard of  certain  essential  facts. 

In  the  case  of  the  employers  it  implies  a  disregard  of 
that  natural  self-respect,  a  want  of  which  would  render 
the  employed  contemptible.  In  the  case  of  the  em- 
ployed it  implies  a  disregard  of  those  abilities  and  func- 
tions which  the  employers  must  necessarily  possess  and 
exercise  if  they  are  not  to  betray  their  own  interests  and 
those  of  the  employed  also.  Of  these  two  kinds  of 
behaviour,  or  of  these  two  moods  as  expressed  by  be- 
haviour, the  first  provokes  the  second.  The  employers 
ignore,  or  tend  to  ignore,  the  moral  claims  of  the  eni- 
ployed.  The  employed  retort  by  ignoring  the  dynamic 
functions  of  the  employers.  So  long  as  this  battle  of 
conflicting  exaggerations  lasts,  nothing  in  the  nature  of 
co-operative  harmony  is  possible ;  and  of  the  two  kinds 
of  behaviour  which  co-operative  harmony  demands  it 


274     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

will  be  enough  to  say,  if  we  content  ourselves  with  speak- 
ing broadly,  that  they  must  represent  a  certain  revul- 
sion from  those  which  now  prevail. 

Such  a  statement,  however,  though  sufficiently  correct 
and  intelligible  in  respect  of  its  general  suggestions, 
must,  before  we  can  press  it  closely,  be  very  carefully 
qualified.  The  requisite  moods  or  behaviours  must  not 
be  merely  revulsions  from  those  which  prevail  at  present. 
Mere  revulsion  from  one  form  of  error  may  easily  lead 
to  another  perhaps  even  more  unfortunate.  The  im- 
portance of  this  consideration,  and  of  the  dangers  which 
may  arise  from  a  neglect  of  it,  especially  in  relation  to 
the  behaviour  of  the  employers  towards  the  employed, 
are  illustrated  clearly  enough  by  the  suggestions  of  many 
reformers  who,  in  the  interest  of  the  employers  them- 
selves, are  inclined  to  adopt  and  press,  in  some  even 
of  their  most  exaggerated  forms,  the  demands  of  the 
wage-earners  as  their  own. 

It  has,  for  example,  been  urged  with  a  view  to  indus- 
trial harmony,  by  persons  of  conservative  temperament, 
whose  enlightened  sagacity  otherwise  calls  for  sincere 
respect,  that  a  just  personal  treatment,  as  accorded  to 
his  staff  of  wage-earners  by  the  typical  employer  of 
to-morrow,  will  ultimately  involve  some  such  arrange- 
ments as  the  following,  in  which  the  practicable  and  the 
impracticable  are  curiously  mixed  together : 

(1)  A  taking  of  his  wage-earners  generally  into  some 
sort  of  co-partnership. 

(2)  A  frank  and  fraternal  disclosure  to  them  of  the 
total  profits  of  his  business,  and  of  the  principles  on 
which  these  are  distributed. 

(3)  A  giving  to  them  a  full  control  of  so  much  of  the 
productive  process  as  can  properly  be  called  their  own. 

(4)  A  consultation  with  them  on  fraternally  equal 
terms  as  to  any  new  methods  or  mechanisms  which  he 
has  himself  invented  and  may  think  it  desirable  to 
introduce. 

Suggestions  of  this  kind,  as  coming  from  conservative 
quarters,  are  valuable  for  two  reasons.  In  the  first 
place  they  are  witnesses  to  the  importance  of  mere  mood, 
temper,  or  behaviour,  as  conditions  of  co-operative  har- 
mony.    In  the  second  place  they  show  how  readily,  in 


TRAVESTIES   OF   RESPECT 


275 


the  case  even  of  thinkers  whose  aims  are  essentially 
teniperate,  claims  and  expectations  which  are,  within 
limits,  reasonable,  may  by  the  mere  impetus  of  sympathy 
be  carried  far  beyond  them. 

Thus,  that  the  wage-earners  should,  in  a  way  not  at 
present  general,   be   consulted   as   to   matters   affecting 
their  own  convenience,  is  not  only  morally  just,  but  is 
strictly  reasonable  also ;  for  as  to  such  matters  even  the 
least  intelligent  wage-earner  knows  far  more  than  the 
employer.^     Further— and  here  is  a  point  with  which 
presently  we  shall  deal  again— it  is  absolutely  essential 
for  the  purposes  of  industrial  peace  that  the  wage-earners 
should  somehow  be  put  in  possession  of  evidence  which 
will  show  them  beyond  all  doubt  the  normal  ratio  of 
wages  to  the  value  of  the  total  product.     But  to  claim 
that  the  employer  should  evince  his  fraternal  respect  for 
them  by  taking  them  as  a  body  into  his  counsels  with 
regard  to  methods,  mechanisms,  and  the  new  conceptions 
and  new  knowledge  involved  in  them,  is  to  claim  what 
in  practice  is  impossible,  and  what  even  if  imagined  in 
any  detail  would  be  absurd.     The  great  industries  of 
to-day  depend  mostly  on  principles  mechanical,  chemical 
and  mathematical,  which  few  minds  can  follow,  fewer 
still  can  master,  and  which  cannot  be  expressed  exactly 
otherwise  than  in  complex  formulae,  which  to  nine  men 
out  of  ten  would  be  wholly  devoid  of  meaning,  and  as 
to  the  application  of  which  not  one  man  in  a  thousand 
could  form  a  judgment  of  any  practical  value  whatso- 
ever.    How  could  a  great  ship  or  a  great  steel  bridge 
be  constructed,  how  could  a  new  chemical  be  brought 
mto  general  use,  if  before  the  construction  or  manufac- 
ture began   all   the   intricate   problems  involved   in  its 
design  or  composition  had  to  be  submitted  for  approval 
to  every  man  who  hammered  a  rivet,  turned  a  tap,  or 
helped  in  moving  a  carboy  from  one  shed  to  another? 
How  could  the  thought  of  Darwin  have  been  ever  com^ 
municated  to  the  world  if,  before  his  works  could  be 

nf  ^  Tj^^  argument  in  the  text  was  used,  in  a  very  temperate  way,  by 
Mr.  J  R  Clynes,  iVl.R,  a  Labour  Member,  in  an  address  delivered  at 
Oxford,  August  2,  1917  ;  in  which  he  urged  the  desirability  "  of  perio- 
dical meetings  between  employers  and  employed,  to  deal  with  matters 
tnat  affected  the  workmen's  lives." 


r  J 


276     LIMITS   OF   PURE  DEMOCRACY 

published,  he  had  had  to  take  the  opinion  of  all  and 
each  of  his  compositors  with  regard  to  the  evolution  of 
species  and  the  Biblical  chronology  of  Ussher  ?  Ideas  of 
co-partnership  which  suggest  an  arrangement  like  this, 
as  the  natural  outcome  of  true  industrial  harmony, 
would,  if  definitely  formulated,  be  dismissed  as  im- 
practicable by  the  common  sense  even  of  those  who  put 
them  forward ;  and,  such  being  the  case,  they  here  con- 
cern us  only  for  the  two  following  reasons.  In  the  first 
place,  as  put  forward  by  serious  and  moderate  men,  they 
are — let  it  be  said  again — signal  illustrations  of  how 
readily,  in  connection  with  matters  of  sentiment, 
moderate  men,  whose  motives  are  beyond  suspicion,  may 
be  led  into  claiming  more  than  they  really  mean.  In 
the  second  place  they  indicate  the  wider  and  more 
important  conclusion  that  a  body  like  the  wage-earners, 
who  are  average  humanity  in  the  mass,  would,  were  their 
common  sense  not  disordered  by  prejudice,  be  found  to 
mean  less  than  their  present  tempers  claim.  The  diffi- 
culty in  the  case  of  the  wage-earners,  as  matters  stand, 
is  this  :  that  they  come  to  the  question  of  what  is  morally 
due  to  them  with  minds  inflamed  by  the  suspicion  that 
the  employing  classes  as  a  whole,  besides  underesti- 
mating them  as  men,  underpay  them  as  workers  also ; 
and  the  more  extreme  and  impracticable  claims  which 
their  tempers  prompt  them  to  make  in  the  matter  of 
personal  treatment  are  not  so  much  serious  expressions 
of  what  they  take  to  be  their  moral  rights  as  the  rhetoric 
of  revenge  for  what  they  take  to  be  a  material  wrong. 
Every  wrong  or  grievance,  whether  fancied  or  real, 
involves  the  idea  of  inequality  in  one  form  or  another, 
and  involves  also  the  idea  of  equality  in  one  form  or 
another  as  its  remedy.  The  demand  for  equality  is 
therefore  a  formula  which,  so  long  as  any  masses  of  men 
are  all  suffering  from  a  sense  of  material  wrong  of  some 
kind,  will,  in  a  general  way,  fit  and  express  the  desires, 
however  various,  of  all  individuals  alike,  and  invest  them 
all  with  a  character  similarly  extreme  and  absolute.  But 
if  once  by  some  adequate  reform,  or  by  the  mere  diffusion 
of  knowledge,  the  sense  of  some  common  material  wrong 
is  removed,  the  idea  of  absolute  equality  as  a  something 
which  is  morally  desirable  for  its  own  sake,  will  lose  its 


THE   RULE   OF   COMMON   SENSE     277 

power   to   charm.      It   will,    indeed,   lose   all   practical 
meaning.     Thus,  if  in  any  country  the  government,  in 
collusion  with  the  employers,  tried  the  experiment  of 
condemnmg  every  wage-earning  man  to  celibacy,  every 
wage-earnmg  man  would  demand  an  absolutely  equal 
right  to  acquire  for  himself,  if  he  pleased,  a  single  ideal 
something— that  is  to  say,  a  wife.     But  when  once  this 
right  had  been  conceded,  the  wage-earners,  fortunately 
for  themselves,  would  not  be  all  demanding  that  this 
wife  should  be  the  same  woman.     They  would  not  even 
demand  that  she  should  in  each  case  be  the  ideal  wife. 
Each  man  would  put  up  with  the  best  wife  he  could  get 
and  instead  of  telling  himself  that  he  had  a  right  to 
expect  perfection,  would  make  the  best  of  her,  and  be 
thankful  she  was  no  worse.     In  the  same  way  if,  as  we 
have  been  here  assuming,  any  general  sense  amongst  the 
wage-earners  of  a  purely  material  wrong  is  removed  by 
a  scheme  of  wages  based  on  a  just  minimum,  accom- 
panied by  economic  security,  and  known  by  the  wage- 
earners   generally   to   represent   for   each   the   amplest 
material  lot  which,  regard  being  had  to  his  own  powers, 
is  possible,  the  estimates  formed  by  them  of  their  moral' 
as  distinct  from  their  material,  due  will  tend  to  resemble 
their  estimates  of  what  is  due  to  them  in  the  matter  of 
matrimony.     Equality  as  an  idea  will  indeed  be  present 
in  all  of  them,  but  it  will  be  an  equality  so  tempered  by, 
and  so  subservient  to,  circumstance  that  its  absolute 
character  will   be   lost   in   the   different   relativities   of 
different  men  and  classes,  or  chastened  by  common  sense 
into  modifications  which  will  be  practically  negations 
of  itself.  ' 

Such  a  conclusion  as  this  with  regard  to  the  natural 
tendencies  of  mankind  when  their  sentiments  are  not 
warped  by  any  sense  of  material  injury  is  far  from 
representing  a  mere  theoretical  likelihood.  It  is  sup- 
ported by  the  plainest  evidences,  which  are  partly  of  a 
general,  partly  of  a  specific,  kind. 

The  general  evidences  may  be  summarised  in  a  few 
words.  They  are  comprised  in  the  obvious  fact  that,  if 
any  masses  of  men  really  regard  equality  as  a  thing 
desirable  in  itself,  there  is  no  need  to  struggle  for  it.  Of 
all  forms  of  happiness  it  is  the  one  which  may  be  achieved 


278     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 


most  easily.  Of  all  the  agencies  by  which  men  may  be 
completely  equalised,  none  are  more  sure  and  efficacious 
than  sea-sickness  and  famine.  If,  therefore,  complete 
equality  is  in  itself  a  condition  of  happiness,  twenty  bad 
sailors  need  only  travel  together,  and  the  physical  misery 
of  each  will  be  turned  into  moral  bliss  by  watching  all 
his  companions  being  sick  into  basins  round  him.  If 
equality  is  desirable  in  itself,  a  whole  nation  in  the  course 
of  a  week  might  make  itself  happy  by  doing  nothing  at 
all;  for  by  the  end  of  a  week,  if  nobody  did  anything, 
man,  woman  and  child  would  be  all  in  the  grip  of  famine. 
Since,  however,  none  of  the  professed  devotees  of 
equality  show  the  least  inclination  to  achieve  it,  easy 
though  the  feat  would  be,  in  what  are  its  purest  forms, 
it  is  obvious  that  equality,  considered  as  an  end  in  itself, 
though  thousands  may  be  ready  to  shout  for  it,  means 
nothing  for  anybody. 

Such,  then,  are  the  general  evidences  which  indicate 
that  even  those  extremists  who,  as  a  mere  expression  of 
temper,  are  accustomed  to  call  for  equality  in  its  most 
absolute  and  impracticable  forms,  would,  if  all  material 
grounds  for  ill-temper  were  eliminated,  have  little  ten- 
dency, as  sober  and  practical  men,  to  press  their 
demands  for  equality  to  any  such  fantastic  degree  as 
would  render  them  seriously  out  of  accord  with  fact. 
But  amongst  the  evidences  bearing  on  this  question  we 
have  still  to  consider  others,  which  are,  as  has  just  been 
said,  of  a  much  more  definite  character,  and  which  lead 
to  conclusions  much  more  definite  likewise,  as  to  what, 
with  regard  to  equality,  men's  natural  sentiments  are. 
These  evidences  are  closely  connected  with  what  has  been 
described  already  as  the  second  of  the  two  conditions — 
just  personal  treatment  being  one  of  them — which,  be- 
sides those  identifiable  with  adequate  and  secure  wages, 
are  demanded  by  the  wage-earners  themselves,  and 
should  also  be  recognised  by  others,  as  essential  to  in- 
dustrial content.  The  second  condition  is  a  recognition 
of  the  Right  to  Rise. 


CHAPTER   IV 

THE   RIGHT  TO   RISE 

The  demand  on  the  part  of  the  wage-earners  of  the 
modern  world  for  a  recognition  of  the  Right  to  Rise, 
though  It  mcludes  by  implication  a  demand  for  the 
Kight  to  Work,  mcludes  a  demand  also  which  is  in  the 
latter  absent.  The  idea  of  the  Right  to  Work  is,  as 
l^uis  Blanc  said,  merely  a  concrete  rendering  of  the  idea 
of  the  right  to  live.  It  relates  to  all  men  equally,  but 
with  special  force  to  the  wage-earners,  these  being  the 
vast  majority  and  assumes  that  the  faculties  of  everv 
man,  if  only  he  is  permitted  to  use  them,  are  sufficient 
to  maintain  him  in  some  sort  of  decent  comfort.  The 
distinctive  assumption  implied  in  the  idea  of  the  Right 
to  Rise  is  the  additional  assumption,  made  in  accordance 
with  obvious  fact,  that  some  men  possess  faculties  superior 
to  those  of  others ;  that  they  would,  if  allowed  to  develop 
them  and  put  them  to  suitable  use,  be  able  to  achieve 
positions  superior  to  those  achievable  by  efficiencies  lower 
in  kind  or  less  in  degree  than  theirs ;  and  that,  whatever 
the  nature  or  scope  of  their  potential  superiorities  may 
be,  means  should  be  within  their  reach  of  using  them  to 
the  best  advantage,  and  of  thereby  raising  themselves 
from  some  one  of  the  lower  ranks  of  the  wage-paid 
workers  to  a  higher,  or  else  to  some  post  or  position 
outside  the  ranks  of  the  wage-paid  workers  altogether. 
The  demand,  then,  for  the  Right  to  Rise  is  a  demand 
made  mainly  on  behalf  of  those  who  belong  by  birth  to 
the  masses  of  average  or  inconspicuous  men,  that  any 
one  of  them  who  possesses  potential  superiorities  of  any 
kind  shall  be  enabled,  through  his  use  of  them,  to  achieve 
and  securely  enjoy  a  material  and  social  reward  justly 
proportioned  to  their  tested  and  objective  value. 

Of  all  the  effective  demands  which,  as  history  and 

279 


W 


l{ 


: 


I 


\i 


iis 


280    LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

experience  show,  equality  really  implies,  when  considered 
m  a  concrete  form  as  the  goal  of  democratic  action,  this 
demand  for  the  Eight  to  Rise  throws  the  most  searching 
light  on  what  certain  of  the  workings  of  actual  human 
nature  are,  as  distinct  from  the  vague  formulae  which 
are  commonly  employed  to  express,  but  which  result 
practically  m  distorting,  them.  The  right  in  questbn 
has  here  been  described  as  the  Right  to  Rise.  This  is 
however,  not  the  name  under  which  it  is  generally 
known  Napoleon  called  it  an  "  Open  Career  for  Talent." 
Jiquality  of  Opportunity  is  the  name  for  it  which  is  most 
familiar. 

The  demand  for  Equality  of  Opportunity  was,  as  a 
watchword  of  democracy,  formulated  first  in  France,  and 
was  originally  a  protest  against  the  system  there  and 
then  prevailing,  which,  as  has  been  said  already,  shut 
out  all  men  not  of  a  privileged  class  from  all  the  higher 
prizes  of  station,  place  and  power,  and  denied  even  to 
considerable  wealth,  as  amassed  by  ignoble  persons,  that 
final  recognition  without  which  it  lost  for  them  half  its 
value.     Ihus,  if  taken  as  a  conscious  expression  of  a 
certain  kind  of  desire,  the  demand  for  equality  of  oppor- 
tunity was  mainly  of  middle-class  rather  than  popular 
origin.     But  events  showed,  when  once  a  voice  had  been 
found  for  It   that  the  desire  itself  was  alive  in  the  masses 
also;  and  by  a  rapid  and  instinctive  adoption  of  this 
celebrated  formula,  they  no  less  than  the  middle-class 
came  to  assert  the  demand  for  equality  of  opportunity 
as  their  own.     Now  the  rapid  growth  of  a  demand  rela- 
tively so  precise  as  this  out  of  a  vaguer,  though  more 
direct  demand  for  an  unanalysed  equality  itself,  is  apt 
to  be  taken  by  extremists  as  evidence  of  the  vitality  of 

Sfn^t"i  1"^  "^^""^  *"'  ?<='=«'-ding  to  them,  the  dynamic 
pnnciple  of  democracy  in  its  purest  possible  form,  and 
through  which  some  entire  revolution  of  existing  con- 
ditions will  be  consummated.  Such  a  view  of  the  matter 
IS,  however,  wholly  erroneous.  The  demand  for  equality 
of  opportunity  may,  indeed,  wear  on  the  surface  of  it 
certain  revolutionary  aspects ;  but  it  is  in  reality— it  is 
in  Its  very  nature— a  symptom  of  moderation,  or  rather 
of  an  unintended  conservatism,  of  which  the  masses  of 
normal  men  cannot,  if  they  would,  divest  themselves. 


MEANING   OF   OPPORTUNITY       281 

The  very  meaning  of  the  word  "  opportunity  "—a  word 
saturated  as  it  is  with  implications— is  enough  in  itself 
to  show  this.     For  if  the  ideal  demand  of  pure  demo- 
cracy were  realised,  and  the  social  conditions  of  all  men 
made  equal  by  force  of  law,  there  would  be  no  such  thing 
as  opportunity,  equal  or  unequal,  for  anybody.     To  say 
that  opportunity  could  exist  of  achieving  conditions  of 
any  kind,  when  the  conditions  of  all  men  whatever  thev 
did  would  be  the  same,  would  be  like  saying  of  a  dozen 
niurderers,  condemned  and  on  their  way  to  the  gallows 
that  they  all  had  an  opportunity,  and  an  equal  oppor- 
tunity,  of  being  hanged.      The  desire  for  equality  of 
opportunity— the  desire  for  the  right  to  rise— in  so  far 
as  It  IS  really  experienced  by  the  morally  typical  man 
of  all  ages  and  nations,  is  a  desire  that  everybody  (he 
himself,  as  included  in  "  everybody,"  being  a  prominent 
hgure   in   his   thoughts)   shall   have   an   opportunity  of 
achieving  by  his  own  talents,  if  he  can,  some  position  or 
condition  which  is  not  equal,  but  which  is,  on  the  con- 
trary,  superior,  to  any  position  or  condition  which  is 
achievable  by  the  talents  of  all.     In  other  words,  the 
very  conception  and  recognition  of  equality  of  oppor- 
tunity as  the  most  important  kind  of  equality  which 
the  democratic  principle  demands,  constitute,  either  by 
implication    or    direct    assertion,    a    species    of   Magna 
Charta,  of  which  the  main  articles,  clauses  or  declara- 
tions are  as  follows — 

Firstly,  whilst  all  men  have  as  much  as  a  certain 
average  efficiency,  a  number  of  men  in  varying  degrees 
have  more; —  ^     &       & 

Secondly,  every  man  shall  have  the  opportunity  of 
developing  his  own  potential  efficiencies,  whatever  they 
may  be,  to  the  utmost,  and  applying  them  to  the  best 
advantage ; — 

Thirdly,  the  development  and  application  of  such 
efficiencies  being  given,  rewards  in  justice  ought  to  be, 
and  for  practical  reasons  must  be,  proportionate  in  each 
case  to  the  value  of  the  effects  resulting  from  them  ;— 

Fourthly,  whatever  position  or  condition  the  excep- 
tional efficiencies  of  any  man  may  have  gained  for  him 
this  advantage  or  these  advantages  shall  not  be  dimin- 
ished   or    diluted    by    any    preferential    opportunities 


;i!^i 


1 1 


282     LIMITS   OF   PURE  DEMOCRACY 

unfairly  granted  to  competitors  of  a  class  other  than 
nis  own; — 

Finally,  the  equality  which  in  practice  the  democratic 
prmciple  demands  is  not  an  equality  of  reward  in  any 
absolute  sense  as  between  one  man  and  another,  but  an 
equality  of  relation  between  each  man  and  his  work—an 
equality  which  can  be  realised  only  on  the  very  condition 
that,  in  an  absolute  sense,  the  amount  of  the  reward 
varies. 

If  any  one  doubts  that  such  is  the  virtual  content  of 
the  demands  for  equal  opportunity  which  are  put  for- 
ward to-day  as  expressions  of  the  democratic  principle, 
he  need  but  give  his  attention  to  the  way,  or  the  several 
ways,  m  which  those  who  are  foremost  in  invoking  that 
principle  as  their  guide  actually  do  reason  when,  for- 
getting more  general  formulae,  they  set  themselves  to 
deal  with  the  concrete  affairs  of  life.  If  we  wish  to  study 
the  actual,  as  distinct  from  the  apparent  principles,  of 
what  purports  to  be  extreme  democracy,  we  cannot  do 
better  than  turn  to  two  bodies  of  men— the  Trade 
Unionists  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  more  extreme 
champions  of  popular  education  on  the  other,  and  see 
how  they  reason  about  the  matters  with  which  they  are 
most  immediately  concerned. 

There  are  no  bodies  of  men  by  whom,  in  a  general  way, 
the  principles  of  democratic  equality  are  professed  with 
greater  emphasis  than  they  are  by  the  Trade  Unionists, 
especially  by  such  of  them  as  represent  the  kinds  of  skill 
which  are  the  highest  and  most  highly  paid.  Now, 
whatever  such  men  may  say  about  equality  as  a  general 
concept.  It  IS  obvious  that,  when  their  common  sense 
and  their  actual  feelings,  as  guided  by  it,  translate  this 
concept  into  terms  of  practical  life,  equality  means  for 
them  an  equality  which  is  not  absolute,  but  is,  as  has 
]ust  been  said,  relative,  being  absolute  only  in  the  sense 
m  which  a  child's  boots  might  be  regarded  as  absolutely 
equal  to  a  man's  because  they  fitted  with  equal  exacti- 
tude feet  of  a  smaller  size.  That  effort,  in  respect  of  its 
absolute  efficiency,  varies  no  less  that  the  size  of  feet  is 
assumed,  and  rightly  assumed  by  them,  as  a  fact  not 
open  to  question;  and  the  essence  of  their  demand  is 
that,  regarded  as  an  absolute  quantity,  reward  should 


SKILL  AND   INEQUALITY  283 

vary  likewise.     The  main  difficulties— and  occasionally 
they  have  threatened  to  prove  disastrous— with  which 
the  British  Government  and  the  nation  have,   during 
time  of  war,  been  faced  in  respect  of  war-work,  have 
been  connected  with  anxieties  on  the  part  of  the  skilled 
unionists,  not  so  much  as  to  the  amount  of  their  wages 
for  the  time  being,  as  to  the  maintenance  of  their  proper 
graduation,  and  the  chance  of  the  value  of  their  own 
work  suffering  from  what  they  called'*  dilution  "through 
the  allotment  of  work  not  unlike  in  kind  to  competitors 
not  belonging  to  their  own  closely  guarded  body      ''  Is 
It  just,"  asked  one  of  their  leaders,  "  can  it  in  our  own 
interest  be  tolerated,  that  skill  like  ours,  which  is  the 
product  of  high  capacity  and  an  apprenticeship  of  five 
long  years,  should  be  for  a  moment  treated  as  though 
It  were  on  a  level  with  the  half-skill  which  any  three  men 
or  three  women  out  of  four  are  quite  well  able  to  pick 
up  m  a  week  or  two  ?  "  ^     Another  spokesman  of  Labour, 
arguing  in  behalf  of  a  certain  body  of  men— men  engaged 
in  urgent  war-work— by  whom  a  strike  for  increased 
wages  was  threatened  at  a  most  critical  moment,  did  not 
deny  that   their  actual   wages   were   considerable,   but 
urged  that,  war  or  no  war,  the  men's  first  duty  alike 
to  themselves  and  their  famihes  was  to  see  that  their 
exceptional  position  in  the  ranks  of  labour  was  main- 
tained, and  to  intimidate  all  who  in  the  future  might 
seek  to  tamper  with  it.     On  another  occasion  certain 
of  the  leaders  themselves  struck  work  as  against  the 
union   on   whose   behalf   they   had   been   conducting   a 
recent  strike  against  the  masters.     "Is  it  just,"  they 

asked,   "  that  the  salaries  which  the  union  pays  us 

salaries  barely  equal  to  the  stipend  of  a  Church  of  Eng- 
land curate— should  be  less  instead  of  more  than  the 
wages  which,  through  our  own  good  offices,  have  been 
won  from  the  masters  for  hundreds  of  mere  manual 
labourers  ?  " 

^  The  above  statement  was  verified  by  the  Report  (published  early  in 
August  1917,  by  the  Commissioners  for  Wales,  as  to  the  causes  of 
ludustrial  Unrest.     Prominent  among  these  causes,  and  next  to  the 

antagonism  between  labour  and  capital"  constantly  fomented  by 
extremists,  is  mentioned  "the  high  wages  paid  to  unskilled  men  and 
boys. 


284     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

Examples  of  this  kind  might  be  multiplied,  but  those 
just  given  are  sufficient.  Let  us  now  turn  from  equaS 
as  mterpreted  by  labourers  and  the  leaders  of  kbour 
with*^  tS^  ^"  interpreted  by  democrats  in  connection 
with  the  question  of  education.  "It  is  in  the  field 
of  popular  education,"  says  a  well-known  English  pub- 
licist, who  IS  as  to  this  matter  a  representative  of  the 
extremest  democratic  school,  "  that  the  greatest  work 
of  democratic  statesmanship  is  to  be  accomplished  " 
and  his  words  reflect  the  sentiments  of  the  mos^t  extreme 

^eneJallv  ir*"^'  champions  of  democratic  equally 
generally  If  we  want,  they  argue,  to  secure  for  all  an 
equality  that  ,s  worth  the  name,  we  must  by  educa  ion 
equip  all  of  them  equally  for  the  business  of  life  be  ore 
that  business  begms.  Thus,  according  to  one  of  tE 
the  immediate  object  of  education  is  "  to  train  alS 
born  for  the  best  of  everything  that  is  human."    Ac- 

ZZ^'v  ^"l^l'"'  '*  'f  "  *°  ^q"'P  ^»  'Children  equaUy 
for  the  full  perfection  of  manhood."     "  When  we  define 

for  ourselves,"  says  another,  "  the  immedS  object  of 
education  nothing  must  lurk  in  our  minds  of  the  old 
Idea  that  '  some  vessels  '  are  naturally  '  of  honour' 
others  naturally  '  of  dishonour.'  "  "onour, 

..^i!.**''?  'l'^"'*^  'P  *^^  ^*y'^  °*  those  who  dream  of 
equality  in  its  completest  imaginable  form.  But  let  us 
now  consider  how  the  publicist  just  mentioned,  who  has 
made  by  adoption  all  these  phrases  his  own,  deds  with 
the  question  of  educatk)n  when  he  approaches  it  as  a 
practical  man.  In  order  that  education  may  be  an 
ThTfT  °^  'T  ^^'"^^r^ti^  equality,  the  first  stej 
ll^J  T  '^'J^^  '^?''  ^^  ^e«"'e  adequate  teachers; 
and  the  adequate  teachers  being  given,  their  work  wil 

Z'^lVr^'V^  ''^''''''^  *h^  bfst  mindsTrom  am^ng 
the  children  of  the  common  people,  as  though  they  werf 
diamonds  "  sifted  or  washed  out  of  the  grfvel  "  of  the 
grea  national  niine,"  and  giving  speciil  care  to  the 
development,  cultural  and  intellectual,  of  these  But 
so  the  writer  proceeds-and  his  words  have  been  echoed 

tYe  tindT'   «^**^™°e^t*'^   approbation-teachers   ol 
the  kind  required  must  be  men  of  peculiar  and  mn^t 

mgly ,  and  the  great  present  impediment  to  true  demo- 


EDUCATIONAL   OLIGARCHY        285 

cratic  education,  in  England  at  all  events,  is  this— that 
the  salaries  offered  to  the  teachers,  which  are  often  barely 
equa  to  the  wages  of  a  skilled  mechanic,  and  never 
equal  to  the  profits  of  a  very  moderate  business,  are 
wholly  insufficient  to  attract  to  the  teaching  profession 
men  of  such  signal  talents  as  the  fit  teacher  requires. 
The  two  things  which  are  essential,  then,  to  a  democratic 

^JouZ      ^^"*=^t'°"  T^^  «ta3  ot  highly  gifted  teachers, 
secured  and  retained  by  the  payment  of  exceedingly 
ample  salaries   and  secondly  a  selection  by  these  persons 
of  specially  gifted  children,  on  whom  they  will  bestow 
a  special  and  preferential  care.     The  same  argument,  so 
far  as  the  children  are  concerned,  was  emphasised  by 
an  English  Archbishop  of  strong  socialist  sympathies, 
when  asked  on  a  public  occasion  for  his  own  definition 
of  what  socialism,  in  its  essence,  is.     The  question,  he 
said,  might  be  answered  by  reference  to  the  case  of  a 
boy  which  had  lately  come  under  his  observation.     The 
boy,  poor  and  friendless,  displayed  an  alertness  of  mind 
of  a  kind  so  startling  that  it  could  not  escape  attention : 
and  yet,  unless  some  one  should  come  to  his  aid  bv 
accident,  the  probable  lot  in  store  for  him  was  that  of 
an  ordinary  labourer,  in  which  all  his  special  gifts  would 
•J  A     »     L,  message  of  socialism  to  the  world  might, 
said  the  Archbishop,  be  condensed  into  six  simple  words  : 
Give  that  poor  boy  a  chance."    The  Archbishop  made 
no  mention   of  the  adequate  teachers  through  whose 
ministrations  the  poor  boy's  chance  was  to  be  given  him 
but  we  may  take  these  as  implied. 

Let  us  now  consider  the  practical  arguments  of  the 
trade  unionists,  of  the  democratic  educationists,  and 
sentimental  socialists  such  as  the  Archbishop,  together. 
We  shall  see  that  the  assumptions,  the  aims  and  the 
general  view  of  human  society  underlying  them,  are  in 
all  these  cases  the  same.  In  each  case,  underlying  them 
there  IS  the  implied  and  instinctive  recognition  that  the 
capacities  of  men  for  practical  purposes  vary.  In  each 
case  there  is  an  assertion  of  the  fact  that  these  capacities, 
as  developed  and  applied,  must  be  rewarded  in  proporl 
tion  to  the  unequal  character  of  their  results,  partly 
because  a  proportional  reward  is  demanded  by  natural 
justice,  and  partly  because  the  higher  capacities  will  not 


'  ! 


Ill 


286     LIMITS    OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

be  developed  and  will  not  be  applied  without  it.     The 
amount  of  the  reward  claimed  for  work  of  exceptional 
value  and  the  value  of  the  work  itself  may  in  particular 
instances  be  overestimated;  but  the  principle  on  which 
the  claim  is  based  is  in  strict  accordance  with  the  in- 
stinctive common  sense  of  man.     Even  the  highly  paid 
artisans  and  miners  who,  in  England,  Wales  and  Scot- 
land, scandalised  public  opinion  by  striking  work  in  war- 
time with  a  view  to  increasing  their  wages  by  ten  or 
fifteen  per  cent.,  were  right  in  so  far  as  their  behaviour 
was  merely  the  assertion  of  the  principle  that  work  of 
some  special  efficiency  is  worth  a  corresponding  price. 
The  democratic  educationists  may,  and  probably  do, 
absurdly  overestimate  the  amount  of  sleeping  talents 
which  need  but  the  magic  touch  of  the  gifted  teacher  to 
awaken  them;  but  the  demand  itself  that  such  talents 
should,  in  so  far  as  they  really  exist,  not  be  rendered 
useless  for  want  of  the  chance  which  education  may  give 
of  using  them,  is  a  demand  which,  if  reasonably  inter- 
preted, all  reasonable  men  will  endorse.     Of  all  these 
detailed  demands  put  forward  by  men  who  claim  the 
name  of  democrats  the  same  thing  may  be  said.     They 
are  perfectly  logical.      They  express  what  most   men 
actually  think  and  feel.     They  may,  if  reasonably  inter- 
preted, be  consistent  with  the  soundest  sense.     But  there 
is  one  thing  with  which  they  are  radically  inconsistent, 
and  that  is  the  vision  of  pure  democratic  equality  which, 
in  moments  of  mere  sentiment,  the  vague  formulae  of 
democracy  pure  and  simple  evoke  in  the  minds  of  those 
accustomed  to  utter  them. 

The  practical  demands  of  the  democratic  educationists 
show  this,  not  perhaps  more  clearly,  but  with  greater 
emphasis,  than  those  even  of  the  trade  unionists.  In  the 
first  place,  with  reference  to  the  children  before  their 
education  begins,  these  apostles  of  equality  start  with  the 
perfectly  correct  assumption  that  this  juvenile  mass  will 
always  contain  a  few  whom  the  teacher's  eye  will  detect 
as  congenitally  superior  to  the  rest.  A  natural  child- 
aristocracy — a  caste  of  intellectual  Dauphins — is  the  first 
thing  which  they  postulate;  and  on  this,  according  to 
them,  it  will  be  the  business  of  the  teachers  to  lavish 


EDUCATION  AND  AMBITION      287 

a  preferential  care.  Secondly,  they  demand  in  the 
persons  of  the  teachers  themselves  another  aristocracy 
or  oligarchy  separated  from  the  average  mass,  not  bv 

^!I^'^I^^  "*'  .'"'^y*  *^*  ^'  t^^y  specially  insist,  by  a 
somethmg  not  yet  approached-namely,  the  magnitude 

whenTh ''"°'"'"^"*/  t^^P-  ^^^'''^ly'  ««  to  the  children 
when  the  process  of  their  education  is  completed,  what 

iV7  IFk'^'k^'  of  equality  hope  and  demand  for  ihese? 
The  Archbishop  tells  us  that  what  socialism  demands  for 
them  IS  a  chance."  Yes-but  a  chance  of  what?  It 
cannot  be  a  chance  of  getting  an  average  livelihood ; 
for,  if  socialism  demands  anything,  it  demands  that  an 
average  live  ihood  shall  be,  not  a  chance,  but  a  certainty 
for  all  who  have  the  will  to  work  for  it.  What,  accord- 
ing to  the  Archbishop,  socialism  demands  for  the  typical 
poor  boy  whose  gifts  far  exceed  the  average,  must 
be  a  chance  of  achieving  a  position  which  exceeds  the 
average  likewise,  and  which  is  for  the  mass  of  boys  who 
have  no  such  gifts  impossible.  Should  there  be  any 
doubt  as  to  the  matter,  one  of  the  democratic  educa- 
tionists, whose  language  has  just  been  quoted,  puts  into 
plain  terms  what  the  Archbishop  only  implies.  The  ulti- 
mate object  of  a  truly  democratic  education  is,  he  says, 
m  somewhat  Hibernian  language,  to  secure  for  each  of 
the     diamonds  "discoverable  in  the  gravel  of  the  great 

top'ofThe  ^Z'"  "  '''"''  '*'""''  "^  ^'"'"«  *«  *^ 
We  thus  see  how  the  very  men,  whether  skilled  trade 
unionists  socialist  Archbishops,  or  professional  doctrin- 
aires of  ideally  democratic  education— men  who,  with 
the  greatest  unction  in  moments  of  mere  sentiment,  give 
voice  to  the  demand  for  equality  in  its  most  absolute 
and  impracticable  form— moderate  these  demands,  or 
rather  (we  may  say)  forget  them  and  instinctively  invert 
their  character,  when  they  come  to  adjust  their  reasoning 
to  the  actual  affairs  of  life,  and  to  what  in  reality  are 
their  own  normal  feelings.  The  democratic  educa- 
tionist who  declaims  in  moments  of  mere  sentiment 
against  treating  any  one  child  as  "a  vessel  of  more 
honour  than  another,"  begins  his  argument,  when  he 
speaks  as  a  practical  man,  with  laying  it  down  that  the 


^f 


■Ml! 


i 


288     LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

first  task  of  the  teacher  is  to  pick  out  certain  children 
like  diamonds  from  the  national  gravel,  and  give  them 
a  polish  which  is  possible  for  such  things  of  honour 
alone. 

The  skilled  trade  unionists,  when  they  protest  against 
the  "  dilution  "  of  their  labour,  do  not  demand  the 
highest  wages  for  ''  all  who  are  born  men."  They 
demand  the  highest  wages  for  work  of  the  highest  kind, 
by  which  they  mean  the  work  to  which  they  themselves 
are  trained,  and  of  which,  so  far  as  is  possible,  they 
desire  to  retain  the  monopoly. 

In  all  such  demands  as  these,  which  merely  translate 
the  demand  for  equality  pure  and  simple  into  a  demand 
for  equal  opportunity  (or,  as  many  trade  unionists  would 
put  it,  opportunity  restricted  to  themselves),  the  ani- 
mating principle,  or  the  assumed  basic  fact,  is  not 
equality  but  graduation ;  and  below  this  fact  lies  another, 
implicitly  assumed  likewise — namely,  the  existence  of 
some  average  mass,  whose  capacities  and  whose  wages 
represent  those  normal  lots,  by  their  upward  distance 
from  which  those  ampler  lots  are  measured,  which  oppor- 
tunity offers  to  talents  above  the  average. 

The  idea,  then,  of  equalised  opportunity,  and  the 
various  concrete  forms  in  which  the  demands  for  oppor- 
tunity are  made,  contain  in  them  a  great  deal  more  than 
at  first  sight  may  appear.  They  are  an  epitome  of  what, 
with  regard  to  social  conditions  generally,  and  their  own 
relations  to  these,  men  of  democratic  sympathies  actually 
think  and  feel  as  contrasted  with  the  thoughts  and  feel- 
ings suggested  to  and  fomented  in  them  by  the  doctrines 
of  absolute  equality  which  are  the  content  of  formal 
socialism.  These  doctrines  which,  as  they  stand,  are 
plausible  only  so  long  as  they  remain  vague,  are  adopted 
by  the  mass  of  socialists  or  social  democrats,  not  as  a 
programme  but  as  a  protest,  or  manifesto  of  rebellion, 
against  certain  general  wrongs  which  are,  or  which  are 
supposed  by  them  to  be,  interwoven  with  the  fabric  of 
the  existing  industrial  system,  the  first  and  foremost 
amongst  these  being  one  of  a  purely  material  kind — 
namely,  a  crude  underpayment  of  wages.  The  suspected 
existence  of  this  one  wrong  alone  is  enough  to  breed 


TRUTH  IN  ERROR 


289 


resentment,   and   in  the   doctrines   of  formal   socialism 
resentment  finds  a  voice — a  voice  which  is  sonorous  and 
challenging  by  very  reason  of  their  errors  and  exaggera- 
tions.    That  these  doctrines,  taken  as  they  stand,  reveal 
themselves  as  more  grotesquely  absurd  the  more  clearly 
they  are  expressed  and  the  more  closely  they  are  ana- 
lysed, has  been  shown  at  length  already ;  but  something 
else  has   been  shown   also.     It  has   been   shown  that, 
underlying,    or    disguised    by,    the    absurdity   of    these 
doctrines,   certain  demands   and   ideas  lurk  which   are 
sanctioned  alike  by  justice,   by  sober  reason,   and  by 
the  self-interest  of  all,  equality  of  opportunity  being  one 
of  them.     Such  being  the  case,  then,  it  has  been  here 
contended  that,  in  proportion  as  the  conditions  corre- 
sponding to  such  ideas  and  demands  are  realised,  and 
any  general  sense  of  wrong  is  thereby  allayed,  the  natural 
tendency  of  men  will  be  to  acquiesce  in  the  practicable, 
whilst  the  impossible  demands  and  hopes,  which  are  the 
sole  distinctive  content  of  formal  socialism  or  of  pure 
social  democracy,  will  evaporate  for  the  simple  reason 
that   they   no    longer   even    symbolise    any   intelligible 
meaning. 

Finally,  as  a  proof  and  illustration  of  the  correctness 
of  this  contention,  the  most  widely  spread  and  sponta- 
neous of  all  the  definite  demands  which  have  been  made 
by  the  spirit  of  democracy  in  the  progressive  countries 
of  the  world — that  is  to  say,  the  demand  for  equalised 
opportunity,  or  otherwise  for  the  right  to  rise — has  been 
analysed.  It  has  been  analysed,  so  as  to  bring  into 
light  all  its  essential  implications ;  and  the  results  of  this 
analysis  are,  we  shall  find,  as  follows — that  the  general 
configuration  of  society  which  this  demand  takes  for 
granted,  and  the  particular  conditions  on  which  it 
insists  as  just,  in  a  democratic  sense,  for  particular  men 
or  classes,  correspond  substantially  with  those  which 
have  here  been  set  forth  in  detail  as  representing  such 
elements  of  truth,  moral  justice,  practical  sagacity,  and 
the  3elf-interest  of  all  classes  alike,  as  are  latent  in  even 
the  most  insane  hopes,  the  wild  disregard  of  facts,  the 
intellectual  self-contradictions,  and  the  inverted  psycho- 
logy of  socialism.    The  nature  of  this  correspondence 


i 


290     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

shall  be  presently  reviewed  in  full;  but  we  will  first 
consider  more  precisely  where,  as  a  matter  of  principle, 
the  essential  difference  lies  between  the  conditions  de- 
manded by  the  temper  and  logic  of  socialism  with  a 
view  to  overthrowing  the  existing  constitution  of  society, 
and  those  which  have  been  here  indicated  as  essential 
to  its  undisturbed  conservation. 


BOOK  VI 

THE  DATA  OF  CONTENT 

CHAPTER   I 

THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  SANE  REFORM 

If,  beginning  with  its  manifestations  in  the  later  years 
of  the  eighteenth  century  and  the  earlier  years  of  the 
mneteenth,  we  consider  socialism  or  social  democracy 
hrstly  as  a  sentiment  having  an  absolute  equality  of 
material  conditions  as  its  object,  and  secondly  as  a 
reasoned  scheme  by  which  this  ideal  object  may  be 
realised,  we  shall  see  that,  as  a  principle  and  a  project. 
It  has  passed  through  three  stages,  which  are  broadly 
distinguishable  as  follows. 

According  to  the  earlier  socialists,  such  as  Ann  Lee 
and  Owen,  the  one  peculiar  element  requisite  for  the 
reahsation  of  a  socialist  polity  was  a  general  sentiment 
in  favour  of  equal  wealth  for  all ;  and  it  seemed  to  them 
that,  such  a  sentiment  being  given,  the  process  by  which 
wealth  was  produced  would  naturally  adjust  itself  to  an 
object  in  which  it  was  assumed  that  the  producers  were 
all  equally  interested. 

Except  in  the  case  of  religious  sects  like  the  Shakers, 
this  expectation  was  completely  falsified  by  events ;  and, 
considered  as  the  basis  of  any  practical  system,  socialist 
thought  might  have  died  a  natural  death  if,  some  forty 
years  after  the  collapse  of  Owen's  experiments,  it  had 
not  been  reconstructed  by  Marx  on  a  practically  new 
basis.  The  change  which  Marx  effected  in  socialist 
thought  was  this.  Whereas  the  earlier  socialists  had 
regarded  the  equalisation  of  wealth  as  a  feat  to  be  ac- 
complished by  the  magic  of  a  peculiar  sentiment  to 
which  the  facts  of  production  would  adjust  themselves, 
the  relative  importance  of  these  two  factors  was  bv 
Marx  inverted.     The  equalisation  of  wealth  required, 

391 


\'U 


r'l 


i! 


292     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

according  to  him,  no  sentiment  of  a  peculiar  kind  at  all. 
Its  basis  lay  in  the  purely  economic  fact  that  wealth  is 
produced  by  manual  labour  only,  one  labourer  producing 
as  much  wealth  as  another;  and  the  only  kind  of  senti- 
ment for  which  there  was  any  occasion  was  simply  the 
common  desire  of  every  man  to  get  and  to  keep  the 
whole  of  what  he  individually  produces. 

So  long  as  this  doctrine  as  to  manual  labour  prevailed, 
everything  for  the  socialist  mind  was  invested  with  a 
false  simplicity.  But,  as  time  went  on,  intellectual 
socialists  themselves  began  to  discern  that  this  so-called 
"  scientific  "  doctrine  was,  as  Bismarck  said  of  a  certain 
British  diplomatist,  "nothing  more  than  a  lath  painted 
to  look  like  iron."  They  began  to  see  that  in  the 
complex  production  of  to-day  the  mental  workers  are 
agents  no  less  real  than  the  manual ;  that  the  former  are 
in  many  cases  incomparably  more  productive  than  the 
latter,  and  that  if  distribution  is  to  be  based  on  the  mere 
facts  of  production,  a  regime  of  equalised  incomes  will 
be  farther  off  than  ever.  They  have,  therefore,  in 
respect  of  the  two  main  elements  of  the  case,  had  to 
restore  these  to  what  was  their  original  order,  sentiment 
as  the  equalising  element  being  put  once  more  in  the 
first  place,  and  the  mere  facts  of  production  being 
relegated  to  the  second,  as  subservient  to  it. 

This  third  stage  of  socialist  thought  may,  in  Tenny- 
son's language,  be  described  as  "a  riper  first."  It  is 
riper  in  two  senses  :  firstly,  in  the  sense  that  socialist 
thought  in  this  third  stage  includes  a  far  more  scientific 
conception  of  the  nature  of  modern  production,  with 
all  its  complex  inequalities  in  respect  of  powers  and 
functions;  and,  secondly,  in  the  sense  that  it  involves 
a  more  complex  conception  of  the  task  which  socialist 
sentiment  must  perform  as  an  instrument  of  equal  dis- 
tribution— a  task  which  must  comprise,  not  the  act  of 
distribution  only,  but  also  that  of  providing  some  over- 
whelming incentive  to  all  those  complex  submissions 
and  complex  inequalities  of  effort,  without  which  there 
would  be  nothing,  or  very  little,  to  distribute.  But  with 
whatever  care  this  conception  may  be  developed,  it 
remains  a  mere  conception,  a  mere  figment  of  the  ima- 
gination still.     Indeed,  its  very  development,  whether 


INVERTED   PSYCHOLOGY 


293 


implied  or  explicit,  into  fuller  logical  form,  has  but 
rendered  more  plain  than  before  how  remote  it  is  from 
any  sentiment  which  is  actually  operative  amongst 
men. 

Now,  one  illustration  of  this  remoteness  has  been 
pointed  out  already— namely,  the  fact  that  this  ima- 
ginary sentiment,  if  it  is  to  do  the  work  required  of  it, 
must  be  in  reality  not  one  sentiment  but  two,  each  being 
the  opposite  of  the  other,  so  that  some  men  will  be 
animated  by  a  passion  for  producing  more  than  they  get, 
whilst  some  will  be  animated  by  a  passion  for  getting 
more  than  they  produce.  But  in  the  whole  conception 
of  a  sentiment  which,  as  a  stimulus  to  individual  work, 
has  for  its  object  an  equality  of  rewards  for  its  own 
sake,  an  error  is  involved  far  deeper  than  any  which 
comes  to  the  surface  in  the  form  of  such  a  paradox  as 
this.  It  is  an  error  which  goes  to  the  very  roots  of  the 
whole  psychological  process  by  which  the  feelings  and 
actions  of  the  individual  are  normally  brought  into 
contact  with  the  affairs  of  his  fellow-men.  It  amounts, 
indeed,  to  neither  more  nor  less  than  a  farcical  turning 
of  this  process  upside  down. 

When  socialists  conceive  as  possible  a  sentiment  which 
shall  so  affect  the  industrial  workers  of  a  community 
that  the  happiness  of  each  is  identified  with  a  purely 
objective  fact— namely,  the  material  equality  of  all— they 
do  not,  indeed,  maintain  that  the  individual  will  forget 
his  own  interests  altogether,  or  regard  them  with  com- 
plete indifference ;  but  they  do  maintain  or  assume  that 
the  equal  conditions  of  all  will  be  the  primary  object 
habitually  present  in  his  mind,  his  own  welfare  being 
a  miniature  image  of  these,  which  is  reflected  in  his 
consciousness  of  the  fact  that  the  ''all"  will  include 
himself  as  a  thousandth  or  a  millionth  part  of  it.     If 
such  were  really  the  nature  of  the  psychological  process 
by  which  the  self-interest  of  the  individual  as  a  pro- 
ductive  agent   is    brought   into    relationship   with   the 
material  welfare  of  others,  the  process  would  not  be 
peculiar  to  this  special  relationship  only.     It  would  be 
*  *yP^  of  the  process  which  was  normal  in  the  case  of 
all  relationships  through  which  the  interest  of  the  indi- 
vidual in  his  own  affairs  is  associated  by  him  with  an 


II 


w 


I  i 


294     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

interest  in  the  affairs  of  others,  no  matter  what  the 
nature  of  these  affairs  may  be.  A  man  who  was  liable 
to  sea-sickness  would,  when  embarking  on  a  voyage,  be 
primarily  occupied  by  an  anxiety  that  none  of  the 
passengers  should  be  sea-sick — a  mass  of  vague  persons 
altogether  unknown  to  him — and  would  surprise  himself 
by  discovering  that  he,  as  one  of  the  crowd,  hoped  to 
escape  sea-sickness  amongst  them.  A  mother's  love  for 
her  daughter  would  be  the  result  of  the  following  psycho- 
logical syllogism  :  I  love  all  daughters.  My  Jemima  is 
a  daughter.  Therefore  I  love  Jemima.  To  suppose,  as 
is  supposed  by  the  later  logic  of  socialism,  that  self- 
interest  is  deduced  in  this  way  from  a  prior  interest  in 
others,  is  like  supposing  that  the  flame  of  a  lamp  in  a 
lighted  room  is  a  miniature  condensation  of  the  light 
diffused  over  the  illuminated  walls,  instead  of  the  light 
on  the  walls  being  an  enlarged  reflection  of  the  flame. 
A  mother  does  not  desire  the  welfare  of  her  own  daughter 
because  she  first  desires  the  welfare  of  daughters  gener- 
ally. She  desires  the  welfare  of  daughters  generally 
because  her  sympathies  have  been  previously  quickened 
by  solicitude  for  the  welfare  of  her  own.  Like  the 
ripples  on  the  surface  of  a  pond,  which  circle  outwards 
from  the  spot  at  which  a  stone  has  struck  it,  the  inclusive 
emotions  and  interests  circle  outwards  from  the  centre 
of  self  or  family,  becoming  fainter  and  less  precise  in 
proportion  as  they  become  more  and  more  comprehen- 
sive. If  any  one  doubts  this  fact,  he  may  very  easily 
find  ocular  proof  of  it.  Let  him  watch  the  faces  of  a 
crowd  which,  drawn  together  by  the  news  of  some  great 
shipwreck,  is  searching  the  lists  of  those  who  have  been 
saved  or  lost.  What  each  member  of  the  crowd  will  be 
looking  for,  in  obedience  to  an  eternal  instinct,  is  the 
name  of  parent,  wife,  husband,  child  or  lover;  and  if 
the  person  in  question  is  named  amongst  those  surviving, 
the  expression  of  the  searcher  changes  from  one  of 
agonised  tension  to  one  of  supreme  relief.  A  shadow 
of  sadness  may  overcast  it,  as  a  sign  of  sympathy  with 
the  bereaved,  but  this  sympathy  will  be  a  secondary, 
not  a  primary,  fact.  It  will  be  a  surviving  emanation 
from  the  pangs  of  personal  anxiety  which  a  few  moments 
ago  had  been  undergone  by  self. 


EQUALITY   AND   ITS   INCIDENTS     295 

In  the  same  way,  with  regard  to  material  welfare  or 
income,  a  man's  solicitude  for  self  is  not  a  miniature 
deduction  from  an  antecedent  solicitude  for  the  equal 
welfare  of  all.  A  solicitude  for  the  welfare  of  all,  so  far 
as  regards  income,  is  an  enlargement  partly  rational, 
partly  emotional  also,  of  an  antecedent  solicitude  for  his 
own.  The  enlargement  is  rational  because  in  no  com- 
munity are  the  material  conditions  of  any  one  unit  iso- 
lated. It  is  emotional  because  a  certain  good  will  towards 
his  fellow-citizens  generally,  a  compassion  for  extreme 
distress,  and  a  preferential  affection  for  his  own  chosen 
associates  are  for  each  unit  essential  to  those  pleasures  of 
social  intercourse,  without  which  life  would  have  few,  if 
any,  pleasures  at  all.  But  an  interest  of  this  kind  in  the 
affairs  or  incomes  of  others  has  nothing  to  do  with  any 
quasi-religious  belief — for  this  is  what  the  sentiment 
which  socialists  postulate  comes  to — that  nobody  can 
be  happy,  let  his  income  be  what  it  may,  unless  every- 
body else  has  an  income  of  precisely  the  same  amount. 
If  a  man,  in  view  of  what  he  takes  to  be  his  own  needs 
and  abilities,  should  judge  that  six  hundred  a  year  was 
a  proper  income  for  himself,  he  might  well  wish  that 
everybody  was  rich  enough  to  escape  privation ;  but  his 
judgment  as  to  his  own  income  will  not  even  tend  to 
enlarge  itself  into  a  passionate  conviction  that  nobody 
should  earn  either  less  or  more.  It  would  certainly  not 
stimulate  him — and  this  is  the  important  point — to 
strain  himself  in  producing  a  thousand  pounds  instead 
of  a  bare  six  hundred,  merely  for  the  sake  of  securing 
a  certain  objective  symmetry  by  handing  over  four 
hundred  pounds  to  a  neighbour  who  was  earning  a 
substantial  income  of  two  hundred  pounds  already. 

The  simple  fact  is  that,  except  in  the  case  of  persons 
of  a  quasi-monastic  temperament  who  regard  equality 
as  a  sort  of  religious  discipline,  equality  as  such,  and  for 
its  own  sake,  is  a  thing  desired  by  nobody;  and  if  we 
ask  why,  as  an  ideal  object  of  endeavour,  equality 
appeals  so  readily  to  the  imagination  of  multitudes,  the 
answer  is  this  :  that  it  is,  by  those  who  desire  it,  not 
desired  for  its  own  sake  at  all,  but  is  desired  because,  in 
the  mind  of  this  man  or  of  that,  it  happens  to  be 
associated  with  one  or  other  of  certain  incidental  results, 


III 


296     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 


which  are  generically  different  from  itself.  Let  us  sup- 
pose, for  example,  that  ten  shipwrecked  men  are  waiting 
for  rescue  which  will  take  many  days  to  reach  them, 
their  sole  provisions,  meanwhile,  being  bread  which  is 
just  sufficient  to  keep  life  in  their  bodies  until  the  rescue 
comes.  Such  men  will  no  doubt  insist  that  the  bread 
shall  be  allotted  to  all  in  absolutely  equal  proportions, 
but  they  will  not  do  so  because  they  all  wish  for  equality. 
They  will  do  so  because,  by  accident,  equality  is  for  the 
time  identified  with  escape  from  death.  Apart  from 
exceptional  and  extreme  cases  like  this,  an  equalisation 
of  incomes  would,  if  the  forces  of  production  were  not 
generally  crippled  by  it,  have  two  incidental  results, 
each  of  which  two  would  appeal  to  men  of  a  very 
common  type.  One  of  these  results  would  appeal  to 
the  man  temperamentally  idle,  by  ensuring  that  the 
worst  work  was  as  well  paid  as  the  best.  The  other 
would  appeal  to  the  man  temperamentally  jealous,  by 
making  him  feel  secure  that,  whatever  he  got  himself, 
no  detested  superior  would  affront  him  by  getting  more. 
As  to  these  incidental  results  of  artificial  equality,  it 
might  to  many  people  seem  enough  to  observe  that  the 
sentiments  of  idleness  and  jealousy  hardly  make  up 
between  them  that  passion  for  equality  as  such,  which 
the  logic  of  socialism  postulates  as  the  great  motive  to 
labour,  and  which  it  also  presents  to  the  world  as  the 
apotheosis  of  brotherly  love ;  but  this  obvious  criticism 
does  but  touch  the  surface,  not  the  root,  of  the  matter. 
The  fundamental  fact  which  requires  to  be  noted  is  as 
follows. 

Though  a  system  of  equalised  incomes  might  minister, 
through  its  incidental  results,  to  the  self-interest  of  any 
idle  man  or  any  jealous  man  individually,  it  would  be 
absolutely  hostile  to  the  self-interest  even  of  the  idle  or 
the  jealous  as  classes.  It  may  be  to  the  self-interest 
of  A,  as  a  man  temperamentally  idle,  that  all  incomes 
should  be  equal,  because  such  a  system  as  this  would 
secure  for  him  the  maximum  reward,  though  his  own 
contribution  to  the  total  were  little  or  next  to  nothing, 
as  in  that  case  it  would  be.  But  it  would  not  be  to 
A's  self-interest  that  a  system  of  equality  should  prevail 
which  would  have  the  same  effect  on  the  several  con- 


THE   IDLE   AND   THE  JEALOUS    297 

tributions  of  B,  C  and  D;  for  if  work  were  generally 
reduced  to  a  minimum  quantity  like  his  own,  there  would 
soon  be  next  to  nothing  either  for  himself  or  for  anybody 
else.  The  socialist  polity  would,  as  Mr.  Shaw  admits, 
die  of  corporate  bankruptcy,  which,  in  the  case  of  all 
socialist  experiments,  other  than  the  quasi-monastic,  is 
precisely  the  thing  it  has  done.  Hence,  since  general 
equality  must  be  a  general  system  or  nothing,  it  is  not 
to  the  self-mterest  even  of  the  idle  that  general  equality 
should  exist ;  and  there  can,  even  amongst  the  idle,  be 
no  such  thing  as  a  corporate  sentiment  in  favour  of  it. 

The  same  observation  applies  to  the  equalisation  of 
incomes  as  a  scheme  whose  incidental  results  would  be 
gratifying  to  the  temperamentally  jealous.  Any  jealous 
man,  taken  singly,  might  well  be  pleased  with  a  system 
which  would  prevent  super-competent  men  from  getting, 
through  their  exceptional  talents,  an  income  larger  than 
his  own;  but  jealous  men,  as  a  body,  would  not  be 
pleased  with  a  system  which,  affecting  all  alike,  would 
prevent  super-competent  men  from  producing  more  than 
the  minimum  they  were  likely  to  get ;  and  would  thus 
reduce  to  a  minimum  the  equal  shares  assignable  to  the 
jealous  men  themselves. 

The  socialist  supposition  that  a  scheme  of  equalised 
incomes,  unless  incomes  stand  for  beggary,  can  be 
brought  about  by  a  sentiment  in  favour  of  equality  for 
its  own  sake  is  a  mere  psychological  mare's  nest.  It  is 
an  absurdity  of  a  double  kind.  In  the  first  place,  equality 
for  its  own  sake,  as  an  object  of  practical  endeavour, 
IS  a  thing  of  no  interest  to  anybody.  In  the  second 
place,  though  the  most  obvious  of  the  immediately 
incidental  results  of  it  might  be  gratifying  to  each  idle 
and  each  jealous  man  individually  who  looked  upon 
these  as  embodied  in  himself  alone,  they  would  be  fatal 
to  the  expectations  of  each  man  the  moment  they  were 
embodied  in  all.  In  a  word,  to  repeat  what  has  been 
said  in  a  previous  chapter,  equality  of  reward  irrespec- 
tive of  unequal  work,  whilst  promising  that  the  many, 
no  matter  how  little  they  were  able  to  produce,  or  were 
willing  to  produce,  for  themselves,  should  all  be  financed 
into  affluence  out  of  the  products  of  the  super-competent 
few,  would  deprive  the  few  of  every  conceivable  motive 


298     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

which  could  prompt  them  to  produce  the  fund  from 
which  the  affluence  of  the  many  was  to  be  drawn. 

Such,  then,  being  the  radical  errors  which,  due  to  an 
inverted  psychology,  render  all  the  social  conditions 
promised  and  projected  by  formal  socialism  absurd,  let 
us  now  go  back  to  those  conditions  which  have  here 
been  set  forth  at  length  as  conditions  which,  demanded 
alike  by  common  sense  and  justice,  the  absurdities  of 
socialism  indicate  even  in  the  very  act   of  obscuring 

them. 

Of  such  conditions  the  first— and  it  is  for  practical 
purposes  the  basis  of  all  the  others— is  one  which  relates 
to  wages,  these  being  considered  in  respect,  not  of  their 
absolute  amount  which  will  differ  in  different  cases,  but 
of  the  elements  of  which,  in  every  case,  the  ideal  wage 
is  composed.  The  essential  feature  of  the  ideal  wage — 
the  wage  demanded  alike  by  common  sense  and  by 
justice— is,  it  has  been  said,  this  :  that  it  represents  a 
value  in  excess  of  the  value  of  the  personal  product  of 
the  wage-earner,  the  excess  being  provided  out  of  the 
product  the  production  of  which  is  contingent  on  the 
directive  ability  of  the  employer.  Now  this  contention 
is,  in  a  certain  sense,  identical  with  the  socialist  promise 
that,  under  a  system  of  socialism,  the  many  shall  live 
very  largely  on  the  efforts  of  the  super-competent  few, 
which  promise  has  been  here  held  up  to  ridicule  as  the 
crowning  absurdity  of  the  whole  socialist  programme. 
Why,  then,  is  the  ideal  wage,  as  here  described,  rational, 
if  the  ideal  income,  as  it  figures  in  the  socialist  pro- 
gramme, is  absurd  ? 

The  answer  is  that,  whereas  the  socialist  programme 
disregards  or  annihilates  those  motives  of  self-interest 
by  which  all  productive  work  in  the  actual  world  is 
animated,  the  ideal  wage,  which  has  here  been  described 
as  rational,  appeals  to  such  motives  in  a  way  which  is  at 
once  the  most  precise  and  the  most  comprehensive 
possible.  By  substituting  for  a  maximum  income  assign- 
able to  all  alike  a  minimum  wage  assignable  to  the 
workers  of  least  efficiency,  and  by  making  this  minimum 
contingent  on  honest  work,  a  guarantee  is  provided  that 
the  workers  of  least  efficiency  shall  persistently  do  their 
best,  whatever  that  best  may  be.     By  including  in  this 


EFFORT   AND   SELF-INTEREST     299 

minimum  a  large— possibly  the  larger— part  of  it,  an 
element  produced  by  the  efforts,  not  of  the  wage-earner 
himself,  but  of  the  employer  whose  mind  directs  him, 
the  stability  of  the  system  is  secured  of  which  the  direct- 
ing employers  are  the  head.  The  fact  that,  according 
to  the  scheme  here  set  forth  as  rational,  all  work  (that 
of  the  employers  included)  which  exceeds  in  value  the 
work  of  the  wage-earners  of  least  efficiencv,  shall,  what- 
ever the  excess  may  be,  receive  rewards*  which  exceed 
the  nriinimum  wage  proportionally,  will  constitute  a 
stimulus  to  every  higher  efficiency,  as  measured  by  its 
results,  from  the  minimum  standard  upwards. 

Finally,  as  to  the  surrender  which  the  greater,  and 
especially  the  greatest,  producers  would  have  to  make 
of  a  portion  of  their  own  products  for  the  purpose  of 
raising  both  the  minimum  and  every  wage  to  a  total 
greater  than  anything  which  the  wage-earner  could  pro- 
duce himself,  this  surrender,  though  absurd  as  it  figures 
in  the  programme  of  formal  socialism,  is,  as  a  part  of 
the  programme  here  described  as  rational,  not  an  ab- 
surdity, but  a  sound  business  transaction.     As  it  figures 
m  the  socialist  programme,  it  is  absurd  for  the  simple 
reason  that  it  would,  if  viewed  from  the  standpoint  of 
those  who  would  have  to  make  it,  be  surrender  without 
a  motive,  and  would,  if  enforced  by  law,  ensure  that  the 
things  surrendered  should  never  be  produced  again.     It 
would  give  every  man  an  interest  in  the  utmost  efficiency 
of  others,  but  would,  at  the  same  time,  deprive  every 
man  of  the  smallest  interest  in  his  own.     The  kind  of 
surrender  here  described  as  rational  is  rational  because, 
as  made  by  the  great  employers,  whilst  still  leaving  them 
with  fortunes  (not,  indeed,  equal,  but  proportional  to 
the  magnitude  of  their  own  products),  it  would  yield 
them  a  quid  pro  quo— something  for  themselves  no  less 
important— namely,  the  stability  and  solidarity  of  the 
system  on  which  their  own  fortunes  depend.     In  other 
words,   whilst  the   promises   and   postulates  of  formal 
socialism  are  absurdities,  the  conditions  which,  though 
closely  resembling  these,  are  here  described  as  rational, 
are   rational   because   they  rest   on   a   totally   different 
basis.     The  method  by  which  they  are  reached  is  one 
which,  instead  of  deducing  the  material  interests  of  the 


300     LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

individual  from  some  fantastic  vision  of  the  united 
interests  of  all,  deduces  a  reasonable  conception  of  the 
united  interests  of  all  from  its  true  psychological  source 
— namely,  the  self-interest  of  the  individual. 

Here,  then,  we  have  the  main  material  conditions 
which,  as  the  essentials  of  a  sound  and  practicable  polity, 
socialism  discredits  by  investing  them  with  impracticable 
forms,  and  placing  them  in  impossible  settings,  but  which 
reason  and  sober  justice  at  the  present  day  demand.  In 
addition,  moreover,  to  these  material  conditions,  reason 
and  sober  justice  demand,  as  we  have  seen,  certain  moral 
conditions  also.  One  of  these  relates  to  the  status  of  the 
wage-earner  as  a  man,  the  other  to  his  status  as  a  man 
who,  possessing  or  believing  himself  to  be  the  possessor 
of  talents  beyond  the  ordinary,  demands  the  right  to 
rise.  These  latter  conditions  are  more  than  rational 
renderings  of  a  something  which,  however  obscurely,  the 
logic  of  socialism  suggests.  They  are  conditions  which 
the  logic  of  socialism,  if  it  means  anything  at  all,  posi- 
tively and  definitely  excludes,  thereby  denying,  little  as 
socialists  recognise  this,  two  of  the  main  demands  which 
are  really  instinctive  in  the  masses  to  whose  passions 
formal  socialism  addresses  itself. 

That  such  is  the  case  with  regard  to  the  right  to  rise 
is  obvious. 

It  is  less  obviously,  but  no  less  truly,  the  case  with 
regard  to  that  moral  recognition  which,  it  has  here  been 
insisted,  is  due  to  the  wage-earner  as  a  man.  Such  a 
recognition,  it  has  been  said,  is,  in  the  last  analysis,  a 
recognition  of  each  man's  life — even  that  of  the  com- 
monest labourer — with  all  its  affections  and  all  its  possi- 
bilities of  pleasure,  as  an  end  in  itself,  like  a  statue 
complete  on  its  own  pedestal.^  But  this  is  precisely 
what  the  logic  of  socialism  denies.  It  assumes,  as  we 
have  seen  already,  that  the  sole  direct  object  of  the 
endeavours  of  the  human  unit  is  not  to  promote  his  own 
welfare,  bodily  or  spiritual,  in  any  way,  but  is  solely  to 
aid  in  the  production  of  an  aggregate  of  material  equali- 

^  Professor  F.  Nitti  calls  attention  to  the  dictum  of  Hegel  which,  he 
says,  the  German  Socialists  adopt  as  the  basis  of  their  social  senti- 
mentalism  :  "  Man  is  beyond  all  doubt  an  end  in  himself^  a^id  shouldj 
as  such  J  be  respected,  not  ivith  regard  to  the  State.*' 


GRADUATION  AS  A  BASIC  FACT    301 

ties  which  are  essentially  external  to  himself,  and  merely 

l!i^,  I  ^^l*-  °'^"  M,^y  accident,  as  an  insignificant  and 
barely  distmguishable  part  of  them. 

That  such  is  the  case  will  be  shown  in  greater  detail 
hereafter,  when  we  shall  have  occasion  to  analyse  the 
curiously  confused  ideas  which  are  associated  by  popular 
thought  with  one  common  name,  "  The  State."  For  the 
moment  it  is  enough  to  note  that  the  moral  conditions 
here  described  as  rational  include,  as  integral  parts  of  a 
possible  order  of  things,  conditions  which,  coinciding 
with  the  instinctive  desires  of  mankind,  the  logic  of 
socialism  rules  out  of  existence. 

Let  us  now  consider  the  various  conditions,  mental 
and  moral,  together,  which  have  been  here  set  forth  as 
representing  whatever  is  vital  and  practicable  either  in 
the  concepts  of  formal  socialism,  or  in  those  popular 
desires  which  formal  socialism  ignores;  and  let  us 
consider  how  far  these  conditions,  if  fulfilled,  would  be 
calculated  to  allay  that  widely  diffused  unrest  of  which 
the  promises  of  formal  socialism  may,  despite  their 
absurdities,  be  seriously  taken  as  a  symptom,  or  a 
vaguely  tentative  symbol. 

In  considering  this  matter,  we  must  begin  by  once 
more  noting  that  the  conditions  in  question  are  here  set 
forth  as  reasonable  because  they  have  as  their  basis  two 
general  facts,  one  of  which  is  now  admitted  by  all  serious 
socialists  themselves,  whilst  the  other  is  attested  by  the 
demands  of  the  democratic  spirit  whenever  men,  and  the 
wage-earners  more  especially,  express  them  in  terms  of 
what  the  masses  really  feel. 

The  first  of  these  facts— that  admitted  by  modern 
socialists  themselves,  or  by  those,  at  all  events,  who 
claim  to  be  serious  thinkers— is  that  efficient  production 
—the  kind  of  production  which  they  postulate  as  the 
basis  of  their  ideal  polity— involves  the  interaction  of 
workers  of  whom  a  few  are  productive  to  a  degree 
incomparably  greater  than  others,  whilst  the  various 
degrees  of  productivity  between  the  highest  and  the 
lowest  are  numerous.  The  second  fact  is  this.  What- 
ever socialists  may  foolishly  say  to  the  contrary,  the 
natural  and  real  demand  of  workers  of  all  classes,  more 
especially  the  skilled  wage-earners,  is  that  men  shall  get 


If 

I 


f  4 
If 

■I 

». 


302     LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

and  keep,  and  be  protected  in  getting  and  keeping,  a 
wage  or  reward  in  proportion  to  what  they  produce. 
We  may,  therefore,  assume  as  given,  and  not  open  to 
dispute,  the  general  fact  that,  in  any  satisfactory  polity, 
the  scheme  of  distribution  will  be  not  equal  but  gradu- 
ated, and  that  some  men  consequently  will,  in  an  abso- 
lute sense,  have  a  larger  interest  in  the  total  product 
than  others.  Hence,  the  crucial  problem  is  how  to 
adjust  these  interests  so  that  all  parties  may  feel  that 
relatively,  if  not  absolutely,  their  various  interests  are 
equal,  that  all  their  interests  rise  and  fall  together,  and 
their  various  lots  in  hfe  may,  from  the  simplest  upwards, 
be  severally  the  best  which  the  nature  of  things  makes 
possible. 

Such  being  the  desired  end,  the  conditions  here  set 
forth  as  the  practicable  means  of  securing  it  may  be 
restated  as  follows. 

First  comes  a  minimum  wage  for  the  workers  of  least 
efficiency,  far  in  excess  of  anything  which,  as  a  body  of 
self-directed  equals,  the  recipients  could  produce  for 
themselves,  this  condition  being  taken  as  carrying  with 
it  an  assured  continuity  of  the  work  on  which  the 
earning  of  the  wage  depends. 

Secondly,  for  all  whose  efficiency  exceeds  the  minimum 
comes  a  wage  which  exceeds  the  minimum  wage  in 
exactly  the  same  proportion ;  this  condition  being  taken 
as  carrying  with  it  a  provision  for  exceptional  talent 
of  encouragement  to  develop,  and  adequate  opportuni- 
ties of  applying,  itself. 

Thirdly  comes  a  respect  on  the  part  of  the  employing 
class  for  the  wage-earner,  not  merely  as  an  industrial 
implement,  but  as  a  man — a  being  whose  life  has  an 
absolute  value  in  itself,  and  is  therefore  a  type  of  the 
values  in  which  all  human  effort  and  human  existence 
culminate. 

If,  then,  we  assume  that  these  conditions  are  realised, 
is  there  any  reason  for  doubting  that,  as  a  matter  of 
theory  at  all  events,  the  masses  of  mankind,  even  those 
whose  present  "  unrest  "  is  most  conspicuous,  would 
accept  these  conditions  with  contentment,  in  the  sense 
that,  as  practical  men,  they  could  not,  if  asked  to  do 
so,  formulate  or  devise  better  ? 


GRADUATION  AND   CONTENT      303 

As  a  matter  of  theory,  we  may  say  that  these  mn 
ditions  would  fumi,  if  established,  everVing  Sin  the" 

unrest     are  endeavourmg  to  visualise  in  their  dreams  • 

S  tteorv '- "^.l?-^  %?^-li^yi-g  phrase,  '^as  a  IZlr 
of  theory,      is  this.     The  conditions  here  in  question 

nrbeca'useThl^^^^^^^  ^''^  *^^  '"^'^'^  ^^  ^—1  ^Sis-^ 
not  because  the  former  are  susceptible  of  more  comnlete 

Iv^^l^'Tiiii^^  *^"  i^"^^   (^^^  ^^^  ideals,  [f  andean 
ever  be  fulfilled  completely),  but  because  th^  more  nearlv 
the  Ideal  conditions  here  in  question  are  approrched 
the  more  nearly  do  the  actual  conditions  achieved  co'nl 
cide  with  the  actual  facts  of  human  motive  and  the 
varieties  of  human  capacity,  whereas  the  more  nearlv 
fTrthTr' M^  realisation  of  the  ideals  of  socialLm!  th^ 
farther  should  we  leave  actual  facts  behind  us,  and  the 
more  completely  would  the  whole  structure  cdlapse! 
drcle      No"^'::    ^    ^  carriage-wheel  is,   for  instance^a 
nJrWf  ^  .  l""^^  carriage-wheel  is  a  circle  absolutely 
perfect,  but  the  more  nearly  it  is  circular  the  better  will 
It  perform  its  purpose.     On  the  other  hand,  if  we  stTrt 
with  assuming-and  such  a  procedure  would  be  com- 
parable  to  that  of  the  socialists-that  the  form  of  the 
Ideal  wheel  IS  not  circular  but  oval,  the  more  nearly  we 
realised  such  an  ideal  as  this,  the  more  impossible    f^r 
prac  ical  purposes,  would  our  actual  wheels^bfcome. 
.r.l      ^^l^rd    however,  to  the  social  conditions  which 
are  here  described  as  consonant,  in  idea  or  princSle 
with  the  concrete  facts  of  life,  the  question  stiirremals 
of  how  near  an  approach  to  these  conditions  is  feaS 

m^d  n?  W  l.^^'u''  r^  ^  'y^^^''  ^^^  ^«  perfect 'n  the 

Sever  if.     u^^"" '^^  ^^^".  ^''  ^^^^^^^*  steam-engines 
as  It  ever  has  been  m  the  mind  of  any  engineer  smee  • 

but  the  earlier  engines  of  Watt  were^  verT'mp^^^^^^^ 

StS^'aTh^  *'  *\'  '"^^^'^^  ^^ffi^^^*>^  Lettered 
Srts  wfth  .nSf.i   '^  workmen  m  adjusting  one  of  these 

fdeals  wlfh  wW^^^  ^''"""^u^  *^  *^"  ^*^^^-  ^^  the  social 
siSr  Hi^  u^  "^u'T  ^^^^  concerned,  is  there  any 
similar  difficulty  which  would  render  impossible  an 
approach  to  them  sufficiently  near  to  produSe  content 
and  harmony  which  would  otherwise  be  their  nat3 
consequences  ?    And  the  answer  to  this  question L  a^^^ 


304     LIMITS  OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

follows.  Whilst  none  of  these  conditions  are  capable 
of  being  realised  completely,  they  are  all  capable  of 
being  realised  to  a  degree  quite  sufficient  to  change  the 
popular  mood  from  one  of  unrest  and  of  protest  agamst 
the  established  order  generally  to  one  m  which  a  reason- 
able content  shall  be  at  least  the  prevailing  element; 
but  even  this  consummation  is  beset  by  certain  ditti- 
culties,  which,  in  order  to  overcome  or  remove  them, 
must  be  clearly  faced  and  recognised. 

These  difficulties  are  of  two  kinds— those  which  are 
primarily  objective,  material,  or  economic,  and  those 
which  are  primarily  subjective  or  moral.  They  are  so 
far  distinct  from  one  another  that  each  must  be  con- 
sidered separately. 


^ 


CHAPTER   II 

OBJECTIVE  DIFFICULTIES 

The  objective  difficulties  just  mentioned  are  all  ex- 
emplified in  connection  with  the  minimum  wage,  and. 
although  they  are  not  confined  to  it,  it  is  in  connection 
dearl        ™'"'™"'"  ^^^^  *hat  they  are  exemplified  most 

T J^^ u^f^  *"/^  '"°^*  obvious  of  such  difficulties  is  this. 
Ihe  whole  scheme  of  wages  which,  having  as  its  basis 
or  startmg-point  a  satisfactory  minimum,  has  here  been 
represented  as  calculated  to  produce  content,  must,  it 
has  been  said,  carry  one  condition  along  with  it.  Everv 
wage  must,  froni  the  minimum  upwards,  be  contingent 
on  the  exercise,  by  such  persons  as  claim  it,  of  the  best 
efficiencies  they  possess ;  and  for  indolence,  for  careless- 
ness, or  for  want  of  prompt  obedience  there  must  always 
lurk  in  the  background  some  curtailment  of  the  wage 
which  would  otherwise  be  the  worker's  due.  Bv  workers 
of  special  skill  this  species  of  penalty  need  not  be  felt 

.tn«I^  ^Tf.^'^f^'P-     ^^'y  might:  indeed,  find  occa- 
«onally  that  the  pleasures  of  partial  idleness  were  well 
worth  some  loss  in  money.     But  for  the  average  worker 
who  would  normally  earn  the  minimum,  any  such  loss 
through  indolence  would,  if  frequent,  be  a  very  much 

y^!L?T"-  'iV^''"''^  ^'^^^  mean  substantiaf  incon- 
venience, then  galling  privation ;  and  only  a  renewal  of 
diligence  would  at  last  save  him  from  destitution.  This 
possibihty  of  destitution  is  one  of  the  primary  conditions 
against  which  Mr.  Shaw  informs  us  that  the  sentiment 

rnH.?H'     ri.P'*'*^',*'-     ^"^   «*  ^^^  favourite   themes, 
indeed,  of  all  socialist  orators  is  the  fact,  which  thev 

worker.'    ^'  /k"'^'"'.   '^^'    *«^    '^'    ^'^^^    ™-««    ottZ 
workers  of  the   modern   world   nothing  but   a   week's 

wages  stands  between  them  and  faminl     In  a  general 

sense  this  may  be  true  enough ;  but  it  is  not  true  of  the 

*  306 


306     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

wage-earners,  or  of  the  modern  world  only.  In  a  general 
sense  it  is  true  of  the  whole  human  race.  It  always  has 
been  true,  and  to  the  end  of  time  it  will  be.  A  small 
minority  of  men  in  highly  civilised  countries  may  enjoy 
what  is  called  "  an  independence  "  by  having  created 
for  themselves  in  the  past,  or  else  by  having  inherited 
from  their  fathers,  certain  permanent  things  the  use  of 
which  assists  the  productive  efforts  of  others,  and  for 
which  use  those  who  use  them  pay  a  certain  price  to  the 
owners.  But  such  owners  are  exceptions;  and  if  all 
their  possessions  were  distributed  amongst  the  working 
mass,  the  plight  of  the  mass  would  in  this  respect  be 
just  what  it  was  before.  All  the  capital  of  the  world 
might  be  divided  in  equal  shares  amongst  everybody; 
but  if  the  human  race  at  large  did  no  work  for  a  week, 
everybody  at  the  end  of  a  week  would  be  either  dead  or 
dying.  The  capital  of  the  world  may  be  compared  to 
so  many  million  spades,  and  the  masses  of  mankind  to 
cultivators.  If  one  man  owned  all  the  spades,  and  let 
them  out  to  the  cultivators  at  a  shilling  a  year  for  each, 
this  one  man,  without  working,  might  have  a  colossal 
income  of  many  million  pounds;  but  if  the  spade  of 
every  cultivator  suddenly  became  his  own,  every  culti- 
vator would,  if  he  were  not  prepared  to  starve,  have  to 
go  on  with  his  digging  just  as  he  did  before.  No  indi- 
vidual would  join  his  fellows  in  working  unless  want 
or  pain  of  some  sort  lay  in  wait  for  him  if  he  failed  to 
do  so.  Thus  no  minimum  wage,  however  ample  its 
amount,  could  prevent  men  from  being  miserable  who 
were  not  willing  to  work  for  it.  Even  socialists  them- 
selves, as  Mr.  Shaw  bears  witness,  admit  that  this  is 
true  in  principle,  and  can  only  propose  to  mend  matters 
by  visiting  wilful  idleness,  not  with  want,  but  with  the 
whip.  No  conceivable  constitution,  political,  economic 
or  social,  could  ensure  content  for  everybody ;  but  by 
making  the  material  conditions  of  a  healthy  life  acces- 
sible to  every  plain  man  who  is  honestly  willing  to  work 
for  them,  the  material  bases  of  content  would  be  pro- 
vided for  an  overwhelming  majority,  and  nobody  in  his 
senses  could  demand  or  hope  for  more. 

So  much,  then,  for  the  first  material  difficulty  which 
would  stand  in  the  way  of  rendering  our  ideal  conditions 


SECURITY  OF  LIVELIHOOD        307 

complete.  The  second  arises  in  connection,  not  with 
the  perversities  of  men  temperamentally  idle,  but  with 
an  assured  provision  of  suitable  work  for  the  industrious. 
This  provision,  which  means  an  assured  continuity  of 
wages,  is  a  matter  no  less  important  than  that  which 
assures  their  quantity ;  for  if  quantity  means  the  enjoy- 
ment of  superfluous  plenty  in  the  present,  continuity 
means  freedom  from  something  even  more  fatal  to  happi- 
ness than  a  lessening  of  present  plenty— that  is  to  say, 
anxiety  as  regards  the  future. 

Now,  as  has  been  said  already,  could  such  a  provision 
of  continuous  work  be  complete,  it  would  be  equal  to 
a  re-diffusion  of  industrial  property  generally.  A 
peasant,  let  us  say,  who  by  cultivating  his  own  plot  has 
been  making  an  income  of  £30  a  year,  sells  his  plot  to 
some  scientific  farmer,  and  by  working  under  his  direc- 
tion earns,  let  us  say,  an  annual  wage  of  £60.  His 
income,  whilst  it  lasts,  is  doubled,  but  he  is  no  longer, 
as  he  once  was,  master  of  the  means  of  earning  it.  He 
is  no  longer  master  of  the  means  of  earning  any  income 

5*   u}'^   •■^"*   ^^  ^^   ^^^   *^^  ^^^^*  ^^  earning  such   a 
doubled  income  continuously  in  one  way  or  another, 
even  though  this  particular  farmer  should  some  day 
have  to  dismiss  him,  he  would  be  no  less  secure  of  access 
to  the  means  of  an  undiminished  livelihood  than  he  was 
when  the  plot  which  he  once  cultivated  was  his  own. 
If  a  skilled  engineer,  earning  £3  a  week  in  a  factory, 
had  a  similar  right  to  exercise  his  skill  somewhere  and 
get  for  It   the  same   payment,   though   this   particular 
factory  was  compelled  to  close  its  doors,  his  position 
wou  d  be  as  secure  as  it  would  have  been  if,  as  a  village 
blacksmith,  he  were  earning  half  that  sum  by  blowing 
his  own  bellows  under  the  shade  of  his  own  chestnut 
u^i.  Indeed,  if  we  assume  that,  at  any  given  time, 
all  the  wage-workers  in  a  great  manufacturing  country 
are  provided  by  the  employers  with  work  which  is  paid 
for  m  proportion  to  its  full  value,  and  if  we  suppose, 
further,  that  this  state  of  things  is  permanent,  security 
would  be  self-established.     There  would  be  no  need  to 
guarantee  it. 

The  possibilities  of  insecurity,  apart  from  those  due 
to  sickness,  can  arise  only  from  one  or  other  of  two 


308     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

things — either  that  the  population  increases  whilst  the 
opportunities  of  work  remain  stationary,  or  that  whilst 
the  population  is  stationary  the  demand  for  work  de- 
clines. In  either  case  the  result  would  be  unemploy- 
ment, unless  certain  businesses  already  prosperous  could 
be  multiplied,  or  businesses  which  were  naturally  de- 
clining could  be  artificially  kept  alive,  or  new  businesses 
created  of  kinds  unknown  before  by  which  the  declining 
businesses  might  be  replaced. 

Now  let  it  be  said  again  that  in  countries  sparsely 
occupied,  and  sufficiently  rich  in  cultivable  lands  and 
pasture  (such,  for  example,  as  New  Zealand,  with  an 
area  equal  to  that  of  England  and  Scotland,  and  a 
population  equal  to  that  of  Glasgow),  the  first  of  these 
feats — namely,  a  multiplication  of  businesses  already 
prosperous — would  be  easy.  Every  new  family  could, 
as  the  population  increased,  be  provided  with  a  new 
farm,  and  thus  enabled  to  supply  itself  with  the  primary 
needs  of  life.  But  in  any  country  which  is  already  so 
thickly  peopled  that  its  inhabitants  need  more  food — 
more  bread,  more  meat,  more  milk — than  all  their  acres 
can  yield  them  in  response  to  their  utmost  labour, 
certain  of  the  inhabitants  are  already  dependent  for 
their  very  lives  on  the  manufacture  of  goods  exclusively 
designed  for  export.  That  is  to  say,  every  crust  of 
bread  they  eat  is  the  product  of  other  nations,  and  it 
comes  to  them  only  in  return  for  certain  products  of 
their  own — such  as  coal,  dyed  fabrics,  lace  trimmings, 
machinery — which  the  food-producing  nations  want,  but 
cannot,  or  cannot  as  yet,  produce  so  well  for  them- 
selves. If,  then,  the  foreign  demand  for  the  manu- 
factures of  such  a  country  declines,  this  will  mean  that 
the  goods  which  it  manufactures  for  export  are  failing 
to  satisfy  the  desires  of  the  food-producing  countries 
any  longer.  The  continued  production  of  them  would 
be  so  much  labour  lost ;  and  if,  for  the  benefit  of  those 
who  have  hitherto  lived  by  producing  them,  new  indus- 
tries are  to  be  created  by  which  they  may  live  still,  the 
goods  which  these  industries  produce  must  be  goods  of 
a  novel  character,  devised  by  inventive  genius,  not  to 
supply  the  wants  of  the  home  consumer,  but  to  stimulate 
or  captivate  afresh  the  alienated  appetite  of  the  foreign. 


BBBBBBBim 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  ASSURED  WORK    309 

so  that  the  latter  may  be  willing  to  give  food  in  return 
for  them. 

By  many  foolish  sentimentalists  this  fact  and  its  con- 
sequences are  altogether  forgotten.     Such  persons  are 
accustomed  to  argue  that  no  country,  equipped  with  the 
modern    mechanisms    of    production,    need    necessarily 
suffer  from   any  lack   of  employment  so  long  as  one 
cottage    remained    in    it    for    labour    to    improve    and 
amplify,  or  one  poor  man  who  would  be  the  better  for 
a   new   suit   of    Sunday   clothes.      But   this    argument 
Ignores  the  entire  crux  of  the  situation.     In  any  country 
which  cannot,  by  means  of  its  own  agriculture,  provide 
food,  let  us  say,  for  more  than  a  half  of  its  population, 
the  primary  meaning  of  unemployment  due  to  a  decline 
m  exports  is,  for  the  unemployed,  this,  that  no  employ- 
nient,  as  matters  stand,  is  open  to  them,  the  prosecution 
of  which  will  procure  for  them  imported  food.     Such 
food  IS  the  first  necessity;   for  mere  employment,   as 
such,  is  nothing  more  than  a  name  if  it  does  not,  before 
all  things  else,  enable  the  employed  to  eat.     If  thou- 
sands of  English  workers  had  hitherto  made  their  living 
by  producing  cloth  of  some  special  tint  for  America,  and 
getting  bread   and   meat  in  return  for  it,   and  if  the 
Americans  come  to  want  this  cloth  no  longer  because 
they  could  get  a  cloth  which  they  liked  better  from  Ger- 
niany,  how  would  the  English  unemployed  be  profited 
should  some  socialist  sage  tell  them  that,  instead  of 
working  to  get  food  from  America,  they  might  make  any 
number  of  things,  which  were  not  food,  for  themselves  ? 
lo  such  a  consoler  men  in  this  plight  would  answer, "  We 
ask  you  for  beef,  and  you  tell  us  to  enlarge  our  kitchens. 
We  ask  you  for  bread,  for  tea;  and  what  you  offer  is 
a  double  supply  of  trousers." 

However  a  state  such  as  that  of  England  was  organ^ 
ised— whether  production  was  controlled,  as  now,  by 
many  private  employers,  or,  as  socialists  propose,  by 
the  directors  of  a  great  national  trust,  the  crucial  diffi- 
culty would  m  this  case  be  the  same.  The  directors 
would  have  to  devise,  by  an  exercise  of  the  constructive 
imagination,  a  variety  of  new  commodities,  together 
with  the  machinery  for  making  them,  which  commodi- 
ties   would    so    titillate    the    fancy    of    food-producing 


S-f| 


•s 


fl 


ll- 


310    LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

workers  in  America  or  elsewhere  that  they  would,  for 
the  sake  of  securing  them,  be  willing  to  send  food  to 
England  which  English  workers  could  not  produce  at 
home. 

Here  we  have  a  task  which,  in  England  or  in  any 
country  whose  home-grown  foodstuffs  cannot  keep  pace 
with  the  population,  might  any  day  prove  impossible; 
and  no  scheme  of  insurance — no  contrivance  for  pro- 
viding continuous  work  for  all — could,  under  all  circum- 
stances, render  its  achievement  certain.  Thus,  except 
in  such  countries  as  have  within  their  own  borders 
reserves  of  agricultural  land  which  are  still  waiting  to 
be  developed  as  the  needs  of  the  population  demand, 
assured  continuity  of  work  for  wage-earners  of  all 
capacities  can  at  best  be  only  partial.  But  this  is  true, 
not  of  the  wage-earners  only ;  it  is  true  of  the  employers 
also.  No  particular  business  or  class  of  businesses, 
however  great,  or  however  flourishing  to-day,  could  by 
any  system  of  insurance  be  rendered  secure  in  per- 
petuity. Unemployment  and  ruin,  so  far  as  their 
present  occupations  are  concerned,  would  always  be 
possible  for  masters  and  men  alike.  Of  all  occupations, 
the  most  indestructible  is  agriculture,  which  can  never 
perish  so  long  as  mankind  endures.  It  may,  however, 
dwindle  in  this  or  in  that  locality;  and  of  other 
businesses  even  the  greatest  may  be  locally,  or  even 
universally,  destroyed.  What  system  of  insurance  could 
have  secured  perennial  prosperity  for  the  owners  of 
stage  coaches  when  once  the  railway  had  begun  to  outdo 
the  road  ?  What  system  of  insurance  could  possibly 
perpetuate  the  fortunes  of  the  Standard  Oil  Trust  when, 
as  will  probably  happen  before  the  end  of  the  twentieth 
century,  not  a  well  in  all  America  has  a  drop  of  petrol 
left  in  it  ?  But  beyond  the  inherent  insecurity  of  indi- 
vidual businesses  there  always  lies  an  insecurity  of  a 
more  comprehensive  kind.  This  is  the  insecurity  of 
the  corporate  fortunes  of  States.  What  system  of 
insurance  could  have  rendered  the  trade  perpetual  which 
enriched  Venice  and  Florence  when  the  Doges  wedded  the 
Adriatic,  and  the  Pitti  Palace  was  the  home  of  a  private 
citizen  ? 

Complete  security,  then,  either  for  wages  or  profits, 


ALL   WEALTH   PRECARIOUS        311 


or  even  security  from  the  effects  of  all  recurring  vicissi- 
tudes, is  no  less  impossible  for  the  individual  wage-earner 
than  it  is  for  the  individual  employer.  It  is  no  less 
impossible  for  the  employer  than  it  is  for  the  State  or 
nation,  and  a  recognition  of  this  fact  is  very  necessary 
as  an  antidote  to  a  certain  childish  idea  with  which 
sentimentalists  are  apt  to  besot  themselves.  Thus  a 
writer,  in  many  ways  remarkable  for  sound  judgment, 
has  observed,  with  regard  to  England,  that  "we  (the 
English)  have  given,  it  may  be,  too  much  thought  to 
wealth — that  we  should,  on  the  whole,  be  happier  and 
better  men  if  we  had  less  wealth,  and  more  open  air 
and  elbow-room;  but  we  have,"  he  proceeds,  "got  the 
wealth.  Here  it  is  as  a  fact,  and  our  business  is  to  make 
the  best  use  we  can  of  it."  Persons  who  use  such 
language  as  this  are  living  in  a  land  of  dreams.  To  their 
eyes  the  wealth  of  a  country  like  modern  England 
resembles  a  marble  column,  which  will  stand  up  erect 
for  ever  when  once  placed  on  its  pedestal.  What  it 
really  resembles  is  a  column  of  water  forced  into  the  air 
by  the  action  of  complex  and  unresting  mechanisms — 
mechanisms  which  a  careless  or  hostile  blow  might  dis- 
locate, and  any  dislocation  of  which  would  cause  the 
column  to  collapse.  All  modern  wealth,  in  short,  in 
proportion  as  it  is  great  is  essentially  artificial  and  pre- 
carious. This  must  never  be  forgotten.  So  long,  how- 
ever, as  in  any  given  country  such  wealth  lasts — so  long 
as  it  exhibits  no  serious  symptoms  of  a  decline  likely  to 
be  permanent,  or  of  any  permanent  failure  to  keep  pace 
with  the  population,  and  so  long  as  it  is  subject  only  to 
local  and  temporary  fluctuations — assurance  for  the 
wage-earners  that  opportunities  of  work  shall  be  con- 
tinuous is  a  condition  which,  unlike  the  fantastic  ideals 
of  socialism,  is  capable  of  being  practically  approached 
to  the  advantage  of  all  parties,  and  the  disadvantage 
of  none.  It  is  capable  of  being  approached  in  the  large, 
if  limited,  sense,  that  wages  might,  by  some  system  of 
insurance,  be  rendered  not  less  secure  than  the  profits 
of  the  employers,  if  the  employers  are  taken  as  a  whole, 
and  more  secure  than  the  profits  of  any  one  employer 
individually. 
If  we  start,  then,  with  a  scheme  of  wages  which  are. 


!l     i 


312     LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

from  the  minimum  upwards,  largely  in  excess  of  any- 
thing which  the  wage-earners  could  produce  for  them- 
selves by  their  own  faculties  only,  we  may  go  on  to  say 
that  assured  opportunities  of  earning  them,  and  a  con- 
sequent security  of  livelihood  for  the  household  of  every 
willing  worker,  are  conditions  susceptible  of  being  estab- 
lished, if  not  with  absolute  completeness,  yet  at  all 
events  with  a  completeness  sufficient,  so  far  as  material 
things  are  concerned,  to  render  the  wage-earner's  lot, 
under  a  system  of  industrial  oligarchy,  incomparably 
ampler,  and  at  the  same  time  more  secure,  than  it  could 
be  under  any  other.  Further,  if  to  these  material  con- 
ditions we  add  the  provision  of  opportunities  for  excep- 
tional talent  to  develop  itself  and  achieve  for  its 
possessors  rewards  in  the  way  of  wages  and  status  which 
are  commensurate  with  its  proved  value;  and,  finally, 
if  we  add  to  this  a  recognition  of  the  life  of  each  man  as 
a  moral  end  in  itself,  and  deserving  of  respect  and  sym- 
pathetic consideration  accordingly,  we  may  say  of  such 
conditions  that  the  natural  tendency  of  the  great  ma- 
jority of  men  would,  if  no  difficulty  exists  which  has  not 
yet  been  taken  into  account,  be  to  accept  them  with 
instinctive  acquiescence,  not  as  perfect,  yet,  at  all 
events,  as  the  best  possible. 

A  difficulty,  however,  does  exist,  or  rather  two  diffi- 
culties, both  of  them  purely  mental,  by  which,  if  not 
removed,  the  development  of  such  acquiescence,  natural 
otherwise,  would  be  impeded.  We  will  now  go  on  to 
consider  what  these  difficulties  are. 


CHAPTER   III 


SUBJECTIVE   DIFFICULTIES 


Many  of  the  bitterest  resentments  of  which  human 
beings  are  conscious  have  their  origin  in  ideas,  not  in 
facts  as  known  to  them  by  direct  experience;  and  the 
primary  cause  of  that  discontent  or  unrest  so  widely 
prevalent  amongst  the  wage-earners  of  the  modern  world 
is  essentially  an  idea,  which  agitators,  since  the  days  of 
Marx,  have  made  it  their  business  to  disseminate.  This 
is  the  idea  that  wages,  whatever  their  amount  may  be, 
never  represent  in  full  the  value  of  the  work  which  the 
wage-earner  has  himself  performed.  Thus,  whether  his 
wages  be  absolutely  large  or  small,  he  is  taught  to  feel 
that  he  is  being  cheated,  even  though  he  may  not  feel 
that  he  is  being  starved.  So  long  as  a  fixed  idea  of  this 
kind  possesses  him,  no  conditions  will  content  him  with 
which  the  employer  is  associated.  However  advan- 
tageous otherwise  such  conditions  may  seem  to  be,  he 
will  look  on  them  as  so  many  devices  for  distracting  his 
attention  from  the  thefts  of  which  he  is  the  constant 
victim.  If,  however,  wages  should  be  such  that,  uni- 
versally and  beyond  dispute,  they  represent  not  less 
than  the  worth  of  his  work,  but  more,  all  ground  for 
pre-condemning  his  conditions  generally  would  be  gone ; 
and  if  only  one  other  condition  were  added,  he  would  be 
in  a  position  to  appraise  them  fairly  in  accordance  with 
their  true  value.  The  other  condition  is  that,  not  only 
his  wages  shall  be  worth  more  than  his  own  work,  but 
that  this  fact  shall  be  also  clearly  known  by  himself; 
and  the  question  is.  How  shall  he  be  made  to  know  it  ? 

Here  is  one  difficulty,  but  it  does  not  stand  alone. 
Let  us  suppose  that  this  is  surmounted.  Let  us  suppose 
the  typical  wage-earner  to  be  fully  convinced  that,  as 
a  matter  of  objective  fact,  his  own  wage  (we  will  say 

313 


814     LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 

the  recognised  minimum)  is  actually  greater  than  the 
value  of  what  he  himself  produces,  that  it  is  the  largest 
wage  which,  for  a  man  like  himself,  is  practicable,  and 
that  he  would  not  gain,  but  would  lose,  by  any  revolu- 
tionary change.  It  is,  however,  one  thing  for  a  man 
to  accept  a  principle  as  such,  and  quite  another  to  be 
satisfied  with  its  particular  application  to  himself.  A 
man,  for  example,  arriving  late  at  a  restaurant,  may 
accept,  without  actual  protest,  the  best  bit  of  fish  that 
is  left ;  but  if,  having  dreamed  of  salmon,  he  has  to  put 
up  with  a  sprat,  he  might  not  be  the  better  inclined  to 
think  the  sprat  delicious  by  learning  that  there  was  on 
the  premises  no  other  fish  but  an  eel.  With  regard  to 
any  given  wage,  and  a  minimum  wage  especially,  men  of 
a  certain  temper  might  find  themselves  in  the  same  pre- 
dicament. They  might  know  such  a  wage  to  be  the 
largest  that  was  for  themselves  possible,  and  yet,  if  it 
failed  to  provide  them  with  as  much  as  their  imagina- 
tions demanded,  this  knowledge,  instead  of  allaying 
their  discontent,  might  embitter  it. 

Now,  an  impracticable  mood  of  this  kind,  known  by 
its  victims  to  be  impracticable,  might,  if  things  were 
left  to  take  their  natural  course,  remain  a  disease 
peculiar  to  a  naturally  morbid  few ;  but  amongst  the 
very  conditions  which  have  here  been  specified  as 
essential  to  a  sane  content  is  one  by  which  this  disease 
might  be  artificially  propagated.  The  condition  here 
in  question  is  the  provision  of  special  opportunities, 
firstly  for  the  educational  development,  and  subse- 
quently for  the  practical  exercise  of  exceptional  talent, 
wherever  such  talent  may  exist — a  provision  which 
would  not  only  recognise  the  claims  of  ambitious  pas- 
sion, but  would  also  tend  to  act  as  a  standing  means 
of  inflaming  it.  The  very  idea  of  equal  opportunity — 
every  argument  advanced  in  support  of  it — is  an  appeal 
to  the  spirit,  not  of  content,  but  of  discontent.  It  does 
not,  indeed,  involve  the  suggestion  that  a  given  mini- 
mum wage,  or  any  given  wage  in  excess  of  it,  is  other- 
wise than  sufficient  for  a  large  number  of  people.  On 
the  contrary,  a  minimum  with  which  large  classes  must 
content  themselves  is  practically  its  first  assumption. 
The  idea  of  equalised  opportunity  is  an  idea  which  makes 


INDIVIDUAL  AMBITION 


315 


its  appeal,  not  to  any  class  as  a  whole,  but  to  each  of 
the  units  who  compose  the  class;  and  beginning  with 
those  who  at  any  time  happen  to  earn  the  minimum, 
what  it  says  to  each  in  a  quasi-whisper  is  this:  "The 
minimum  represents  a  lot  which  ought  to  content  the 
great  mass  of  your  fellows ;  but,  in  this  way  or  in  that, 
your  efficiency  is  appreciably  greater  than  theirs.  The 
lot  which  contents  them  ought  not  to  content  you! 
and  your  one  object  should  be,  by  hook  or  by  crook, 
to  escape  from  it." 

Now,  so  far  as  men  are  concerned  who,  ambitious  of 
ampler  fortunes  than  those  which  were  theirs  at  starting, 
actually  possess  the  abilities  by  which  these  ampler 
fortunes  can  be  created,  the  individual  ambitions  which 
It  IS  the  object  of  equalised  opportunity  to  inflame  are 
forces  of  triple  utility.  They  bring  content  through 
their  results  to  the  ablest  of  the  citizens  themselves. 
They  promote  general  content  by  demonstrating  to  the 
citizens  generally  that  all  effective  effort  is  sure  of  its 
due  reward;  and,  finally,  such  ambitions  are  so  many 
contributions  to  the  forces— industrial,  military  or  in- 
tellectual—on which  the  wealth,  the  security  and  the 
civilisation  of  any  complex  modern  State  depend. 

But  ambition,  when  unaccompanied  by  commensurate 
powers  of  achievement,  is  a  malady  fatal  to  the  peace 
of  the  ambitious  men  themselves,  and  injurious  to  the 
society  of  which  they  form  a  part.  If  the  son  of  a 
ploughman  should  possess  a  potential  genius  which 
would,  if  developed,  and  applied  by  him  as  a  great 
director  of  agriculture,  enable  the  soil  of  his  country  to 
double  its  yield  of  corn,  to  encourage  in  a  man  like  this 
the  hope  of  exchanging  his  father's  cottage  for  a  palace 
would  be  not  only  to  satisfy  the  desires  of  the  man 
himself ;  it  would  be,  at  the  same  time,  to  confer  on  his 
country  a  benefit  which  no  private  fortune,  however 
large,  could  repay.  But  to  encourage  similar  hopes  in 
the  sons  of  all  ploughmen  indiscriminately  would  merely 
cause  them  to  look  down  with  contempt  on  a  lot  which 
they  could  not  better,  which  they  would  else  have  ac- 
cepted as  natural,  and  which  must,  moreover,  be  always 
the  lot  of  a  considerable  portion  of  mankind.  The  in- 
discriminate stimulation  of  ambition,  in  the  case  of  nine 


316    LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 

men  out  of  ten,  would  be  to  blight  their  lives  with  a 
purely  artificial  disappointment,  and  to  stigmatise  with 
the  sign  of  failure  half  the  necessary  occupations  of  the 
world. 

If,  then,  we  assume  a  system  of  wages  to  be  estab- 
lished which,  regard  being  had  to  the  total  product  of  a 
nation,  and  to  the  inequalities  of  the  productive  units, 
represents  for  the  wage-earners  generally  the  amplest 
material  conditions  which  are  for  them,  in  their  several 
degrees,  possible,  these  material  conditions  must,  if  they 
are  to  produce  content,  be  accompanied  by  two  others, 
which  are  non-material  or  subjective.  One  is  a  certain 
knowledge  on  the  part  of  the  wage-earners  generally 
with  regard  to  the  facts  and  forces  which  the  industrial 
system  embodies,  and  on  which  the  extent  and  limits 
of  its  productive  power  depends.  The  other  is  a  moral 
adjustment  by  the  wage-earners,  whether  as  groups  or 
as  individuals,  of  their  several  desires  or  expectations 
to  the  best  lot  which  is  possible  in  each  particular  case. 
And  here  we  come  to  the  question  of  how  these  two 
essentially  subjective  conditions — namely,  a  knowledge 
of  certain  objective  facts,  and  an  adjustment  of  expecta- 
tions to  circumstances — are  to  be  secured. 

The  general  answer  to  this  question  is  obvious.  They 
must  be  secured,  if  they  can  be  secured  at  all,  by  certain 
processes  of  education ;  and  these  will  be  of  two  kinds. 
One  process  will  be  that  of  imparting  knowledge,  which 
is  very  largely  statistical,  whilst  all  of  it  relates  to 
matters  of  a  kind  more  or  less  precise.  The  other, 
which  may  seem  more  difficult  because  it  is  more  vague, 
may  be  described  as  a  training  of  the  imagination. 

Of  these  two  educational  processes,  let  us  consider  the 
process  of  instruction  as  to  definite  facts  first. 

The  general  character  of  the  facts  with  which  such 
instruction  would  concern  itself  may  be  indicated  by 
a  few  examples. 

The  first  question  which  the  tjrpical  wage-earner  will 
be  inclined  to  ask  is  this  :  "By  what  primary  conditions 
is  the  wage  which  I  earn,  or  am  likely  to  earn,  limited  ?  " 
If  we  suppose  this  question  to  have  been  put  by  a  citizen 
of  the  United  Kingdom  at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth 
century,  the  facts  which  would  have  to  be  imparted  to 


EXAGGERATED   EXPECTATIONS     317 

him  as  the  basis  of  a  rational  answer  would,  before  all 
others,  be  these  :  The  total  product,  or  income,  of  the 
United  Kingdom  at  the  time,  together  with  the  income 
per  inhabitant  which  this  total  represents.  Then,  for 
purposes  of  comparison,  would  come  similar  facts  re- 
lating to  other  countries,  and  to  the  United  Kingdom 
itself  at  other  periods  of  a  more  or  less  recent  past.  A 
knowledge  of  such  outstanding  facts  would  put  him  in 
a  position  to  appreciate  one  which  he  would  readily 
recognise  as  bearing  on  his  own  situation.  This  is  the 
fact  that,  at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century,  the 
actual  average  wage  of  the  workers  of  the  United  King- 
dom was  incomparably  greater  than  that  which  in  many 
European  countries,  and  even  in  the  United  Kingdom 
itself  a  couple  of  generations  earlier,  could  have  fallen 
to  the  lot  of  any  body  had  the  total  income  of  such 
countries  been  divided  equally  amongst  all. 

A  knowledge  of  facts  like  these  would  enable  him 
to  appreciate  another— namely,  that  so  many  workers  of 
average  capacity  being  given,  their  possibilities  of  ma- 
terial welfare  vary  in  accordance  with  conditions  which 
are  altogether  external  to  themselves.  He  would  recog- 
nise this  fact  as  one  which  demands  explanation;  and 
his  mind  would  be  open  to  an  understanding  of  what 
these  conditions  are— such,  for  example,  as  the  applica- 
tion, more  or  less  comprehensive,  of  the  exceptional 
talents  of  the  few  to  the  task  of  directing  the  co-operative 
efforts  of  the  many. 

Further,  in  the  case  of  such  countries  as  the  United 
Kingdom,  the  United  States  and  Prussia,  the  statistical 
records  of  which  are  sufficiently  exact  for  the  purpose, 
definite  information  might  be  given  him  as  to  index 
facts  such  as  the  following :— the  total  of  the  wages  and 
salaries  of  the  workers  employed  by  masters,  the  earn- 
ings of  independent  workers  like  small  shopkeepers  and 
professional  men  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  the  larger 
employers  and  of  the  rich  generally  on  the  other.  ^    And 

1  Hie  super-tax  returns  for  the  United  Kingdom  now  give  precise 
mtormation  as  to  the  number  and  aggregate  amount  of  all  groups  of 
incomes  exceeding  £3000.  Many  of  the  absurd  ideas  current  with 
regard  to  the  rich  would  be  reduced  to  sobriety  by  the  dissemination  of 
detamte  knowledge  as  to  these  details. 


318     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

to  such  outstanding  facts  there  might,  as  occasion  re- 
quired, be  added  others  which  have  constantly  been 
subjects  of  wild  discussion — for  example,  the  amounts 
of  income  which  are  severally  represented  by  land-rent 
taken  as  a  whole,  by  the  annual  increment  in  the  rental 
value  of  building-sites,  and  the  quasi-rent  received  by 
the  owners  of  coal  and  minerals. 

It  may  be  thought  that  any  popular  education  with 
regard  to  facts  like  these  would  fail  to  be  effective  for 
the  two  following  reasons.  One  is  the  likelihood  that  the 
facts,  however  presented,  would  be  denounced  by  many 
as  inaccurate,  or  at  least  as  unfairly  selected  with  the 
object  of  suggesting  conclusions  desired  by  some  one 
party.  The  other  reason  is  that,  as  a  part  of  any  possible 
curriculum,  an  exposition  of  these  facts  would,  for  most 
teachers,  be  difficult,  and  would  therefore  have  little 
influence  on  the  tempers  and  opinions  of  the  taught. 

But  there  is  ample  evidence  to  show  that  neither  of 
these  objections  is  valid. 

In  the  first  place,  as  to  the  facts  themselves,  there  is  a 
very  considerable  number  of  them,  and  these  of  the 
first  importance,  which,  though  not  popularly  known, 
are  recorded  almost  as  accurately  as  the  distance  from 
New  York  to  Liverpool.  Such,  for  example,  are  the 
incomes  of  certain  great  countries;  the  number  of  per- 
sons commonly  called  "the  rich  ";  and  the  ratio  of  the 
aggregate  income  of  such  persons  to  the  whole.  Such, 
also,  are  the  fractions  of  the  whole  which  are  represented 
by  land-rent,  by  '*  unearned  increment,"  and  by  royal- 
ties paid  to  owners  in  respect  of  minerals  such  as  iron 
ore  and  coal.  Facts  such  as  these,  attested  by  direct 
records,  not  by  conjectures  or  estimates,  would,  if 
generally  known,  constitute  so  many  sign-posts,  by 
which  popular  thought  and  expectation  would  be  warned 
off  from  the  regions  of  fantastic  guess-work,  and  guided 
at  least  in  a  more  or  less  right  direction.  Nor  need  such 
facts  be  too  complex  or  numerous  for  an  intelligent 
teacher  to  communicate,  or  an  average  pupil  to  under- 
stand. They  need  not  be  more  complex  or  numerous 
than  the  salient  facts  of  geography  which  are  taught, 
and  found  generally  intelligible  in  any  national  school. 
They  would  enlighten  a  man's  conception  of  the  social 


MMiMMaMr- 


STATISTICAL   EDUCATION  319 

possibilities  of  his  life  very  much  as  the  outlines  shown 
on  a  geographical  chart  enlighten  his  conceptions  of  his 
own  place  on  the  globe. 

If  any  one  doubts  whether  a  correct  popular  education 
with  regard  to  facts  like  these  would  tend  to  exert  an 
influence  such  as  that  which  is  here  predicted,  his  doubts 
may  be  set  at  rest  by  the  demonstrative  evidence  of 
history.  He  need  merely  consider  the  influence  which, 
with  a  contrary  object,  has  constantly  been,  and  is  con- 
stantly being  exerted,  by  education,  incorrect  and  dis- 
torted, but  otherwise  of  the  same  order.  The  earliest 
Manifesto  of  the  socialist  party  in  England  began  with 
the  words,  "Educate,  Educate,  Educate,"  and  then 
went  on  to  explain  that  the  great  and  primary  fact  which 
a  socialist  education  would  have  to  bring  home  to  the 
people  was  the  fact  that  the  manual  labourers— the  sole 
and  only  begetters  of  all  the  wealth  of  the  country- 
received  only  "three-thirteenths"  of  what  they  them- 
selves produced.  Socialists,  indeed,  from  the  days  of 
Marx  onwards— herein  exhibiting  the  soundest  practical 
sense— have  recognised  statistical  education  as  the  most 
potent  means  of  appealing  to  the  passions  which  they 
desire  to  rouse. 

Let  us  take  two  signal  examples.  Of  all  the  intel- 
lectual leaders  of  the  modern  socialist  movement,  two 
men— a  German  Jew  and  a  Californian— stand  out  from 
the  rest  in  respect  of  their  powers  of  exposition,  and 
of  the  world-wide  influence  they  have  exercised  over  the 
tempers  and  the  imagination  of  multitudes.  One  of 
these  IS  Marx  himself,  the  other  is  Henry  George ;  and, 
apart  from  the  merits  of  their  exposition,  which  was 
the  niere  vehicle  or  instrument  of  their  teaching,  the 
teachmg  of  each  was  influential  for  the  sole  and  simple 
reason  that  it  culminated  in  a  passionate  insistence  on 
an  alleged  statistical  fact.  The  alleged  fact  was  this, 
that,  m  every  progressive  country,  the  classes  who  pro- 
duce all  wealth  are  robbed  of  four-fifths  or  three-fourths 
of  their  products  by  a  class  absolutely  idle,  and  that 
consequently  the  producers  ought  by  rights  to  get  from 

^u  ^^Tii^  ^^"^  *™^^  ^^  ^^^^  ^^  *^^y  actually  get  now. 
Ihe  Marxian  doctrine  in  this  respect  has  been  here 
examined   already,   and  even   by  serious   socialists  his 


1i 


320     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

statistical  arithmetic  is  now  denounced  as  preposterous. 
The  Georgian  argument,  though  leading  to  a  like  con- 
clusion, differed  from  that  of  Marx  in  one  important 
particular.  According  to  Marx,  the  robbers  who  re- 
duced the  masses  to  beggary  were  tlie  owners  of  mdus- 
trial  capital.  According  to  George,  the  capitalists  were 
extremely  respectable  persons.  The  real  criminals  were 
the  landlords,  who  robbed,  not  only  the  productive 
wage-earners,  but  the  no  less  productive  owners  of 
industrial  capital  along  with  them.  This  conclusion  was 
deduced  by  George  from  an  assumption  which  was, 
according  to  him,  of  universal  validity,  that  in  propor- 
tion as  the  income  of  any  country  increases,  the  rent 
of  crude  land,  as  distinct  from  the  rent  of  improvements, 
forms  an  ever-increasing  fraction  of  the  total,  eating  up 
"  the  earnings  of  capital  as  well  as  the  wages  of  labour," 
until  nothing  is  left  for  the  majority  but  a  residue  just 
sufficient  for  the  bare  support  of  life.  Now  if  anythmg 
in  the  world  is  capable  of  being  proved  by  evidence,  one 
such  thing  as  this  :— that  the  basic  assumption  on  which 
the  whole  fabric  of  George's  reasoning  rests  is  altogether 
a  delusion.  In  Great  Britain,  for  example,  which  George 
cited  as  the  classical  illustration  of  its  truth,  land-rent 
has,  as  the  national  income  increased,  been  a  relatively 
dwindling,  not  an  increasing,  fraction  of  it.  At  the 
beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  it  was  14  per  cent, 
of  the  total.  A  century  later  it  was  barely  as  much  as 
4  per  cent.  The  Georgian  proposition  that  in  all  pro- 
gressive countries  75  or  80  per  cenc.  of  the  entire  national 
product  is  stolen  from  the  nation  by  a  small  group  of 
landlords  is  no  more  true  than  the  Marxian  proposition 
that  a  similar  fraction  is  stolen  by  a  small  group  of 

capitalists. 

Emanating,  as  they  do,  from  the  two  most  important 
thinkers  who  have  moulded  revolutionary  thought  in 
the  course  of  the  nineteenth  century,  it  is  amusing  to 
note,  with  regard  to  these  two  propositions,  not  only  that 
both  of  them  are  contradicted  by  definitely  ascertain- 
able facts,  but  also  that  each  proposition  is  a  vehement 
contradiction  of  the  other.  The  point,  however,  which 
mainly  concerns  us  here  is  that  Marx  and  George  alike 
exercised  a  profound  and  disturbing  influence  on  the 


EFFECTS   OF  FALSE   STATISTICS    321 


judgment  and  temper  of  multitudes,  and  that  they  did 
so  by  a  process  of  education,  the  practical  object  and 
the  practical  effect  of  which  was  to  create  a  popular 
belief  in  the  actuality  of  an  alleged  statistical  fact,  the 
alleged  fact  being  in  each  case  a  preposterous  falsehood. 
To  these  signal  illustrations  it  may  be  interesting  to 
add  two  others,  on  a  smaller  scale,  but  essentially  the 
same  in  kind.  George's  doctrine  that  land-rent  in  every 
progressive  country  necessarily  eats  up  most  of  any 
growing  national  income,  and  that  thus,  in  Great  Britain 
especially,  the  only  rich  people  are  the  peers  and  the 
country  squires,  has  never  been  practically  accepted 
even  by  any  radical  government ;  but  many  years  after 
his  death  the  British  Government  accepted  two  minor 
doctrines  implied  in  it,  and  won,  by  so  doing,  the  frantic 
applause  of  all  its  most  extreme  supporters.  One  of 
these  minor  doctrines  related,  not  to  land-rent  as  a 
whole,  but  to  the  annual  increase  of  the  rent  of  the  sites 
of  urban  buildings.  The  other  related  to  the  income, 
derived  in  the  form  of  royalties,  from  minerals,  and  more 
particularly  coal,  which  was  described  by  an  eloquent 
statesman  as  the  basic  capital  of  the  country.  On  both 
these  kinds  of  income — on  royalties  and  on  "unearned 
increment  "—  the  government  determined  to  levy  a 
special  duty;  and  both  these  kinds  of  income  were 
presented  to  the  public  imagination  as  quantities  so 
enormous  that  visions  were  rife  everywhere  of  the 
almost  illimitable  revenue  which  a  tax  on  them  would 
extract  from  the  rich  for  betterment  of  the  population 
generally.  Both  these  kinds  of  income  proved,  in  reality, 
to  be  quantities  so  minute  that  the  duty  imposed 
on  them  was  hardly  worth  the  trouble  of  collecting.^ 

*  If  any  one  year  be  taken  between  the  years  1900  and  1915,  the 
portion  of  it  which  consisted  of  the  unearned  increment  of  site-values 
was  between  one  three-hundredth  and  one  four-hundredth  part  of  it. 
So  much  might  have  been  easily  discovered  beforehand,  by  collating 
the  returns  of  the  Commissioners  of  Inland  Revenue  with  other  kindred 
evidences.  'J'he  over-estimate  of  the  total  of  mineral  royalties  was  much 
more  pardonable.  'Hie  then  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  was  riffht  in 
describing  the  coal-deposits  of  Great  Britain  as  its  main  capital  asset ; 
and  the  fact  that  royalties  (or  the  profits)  on  this  capital  are  only  a  few 
millions  is  due  to  the  fact,  not  at  once  apparent,  that  coal-deposits  differ 
trom  other  property,  such  as  the  surface  of  the  land,  in  this  way.  If  so 
many  acres  of  land  are  let  for  a  house  and  garden,  the  occupant  enjoys 


I  :      i\ 


!' 


fi 


322     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

The  curious  ebullitions  of  popular  temper  and  expecta- 
tion which  these  essays  in  sensational  finance  excited 
were  due  altogether  to  what  was  virtually  a  process  of 
education— an  education  wildly  fallacious— as  to  two 
statistical  facts— namely,  the  actual  amounts  of  the 
two  kinds  of  income  in  question.  If  with  regard  to 
either  of  these  two  cases  the  statistical  facts  mvolved 
had  been  matters  of  general,  and  more  or  less  accurate, 
knowledge,  the  fiscal  policy  of  the  government  might 
have  roused  public  attention,  and  elicited  many  sober, 
perhaps  many  sound,  judgments;  but  it  would  not  have 
roused,  as  it  did,  storms  of  popular  passion  which,  so 
long  as  they  lasted,  made  sound  judgment  impossible. 

If,  then,  a  false  education  with  regard  to  statistical 
facts  can  produce  an  effect  so  profound  on  the  popular 
temper  in  one  way,  a  correct  education  will,  we  may  safely 
assume,  produce  an  effect  no  less  profound,  in  another. 
Finally,  since  experience  has  shown  that  a  deliberate  and 
effective  system  of  inaccurate  education  is  practicable, 
it  stands  to  reason  that  a  system  of  accurate  education 
relating  to  the  same  order  of  facts  is  no  mere  academic 
dream,  but  is  what  would  be  called  in  America  a  "  prac- 
tical proposition  "  likewise.'  It  would  not  involve— for 
this  would  be  indeed  impracticable— the  general  inculca- 
tion of  any  one  economic  theory.  To  imagine  such  a 
system  as  this  would  be  no  less  absurd  than  to  imagine 
a  national  system  of  education  in  politics,  which  would 
inculcate  blind  adherence  to  one  particular  politician. 
The  kind  of  education  here  indicated— and  it  is  only  a 


the  entire  value  of  the  land— its  convenience  of  situation  and  its  amenity 
—at  once.  But  of  the  coal  deposits  of  the  country,  so  much  only  can 
be  enjoyed  from  year  to  year  as  is  brought  to  the  surface  ;  and  the 
larger  part  of  it  will  not  have  been  usable  capital  for  generations. 

1  A  scheme  of  education,  precisely  similar  in  kind  to  that  above  mdi- 
cated  (though  relating  not  to  economic  conditions  generally,  but  to 
economic  conditions  amongst  others,  as  bearing  on  the  question  of  war) 
has,  since  the  above  passage  was  written,  been  actually  projected  ni 
America  by  President  Wilson,  who— it  was  so  announced  m  June  1917 

«  was  considering  the  appointment  of  a  special  board,  not  only  for 

ihe  dissemination  of  ordinary  news,  but  for  bringing  home  to  the 
L.eople  at  large  by  a  series  of  lectures  ....  and  also  by  exhaustive 
summaries,  what  their  vital  interests,  material  and  otherwise,  in  the 
vunflict  are. 


IMAGINATIVE  DISCONTENT        323 

part  of  education,  if  the  word  "education  "  be  used  in 
its  wider  sense — would  bear  the  same  relation  to  par- 
ticular   economic    theories    that    geography    bears    to 
schemes  of  international   policy.     It  would   deal  only 
with  facts  of  a  certain  order,  these  being  mainly,  though 
not  wholly,  statistical ;  and  it  would  leave  the  individual, 
with  such  facts  in  view,  to  judge  of  social  conditions  and 
social  possibilities  for  himself.      It  would,  however,  if 
it  did  no  more  than  this,  create  an  atmosphere  in  which 
outrageous    expectations    and    outrageous    judgments 
would  die.      More  particularly  it  would  create  in  the 
earner  of  a  just  minimum  wage,  who  belongs  to  any 
one  of  the  richer  countries  of  the  world,  a  sufficiently 
correct  idea  of  the  advantages  which  he  gained  as  a 
participator  in  the  intellectualised  industry  of  his  own 
country  to-day.     It  would  liberate  him  from  the  belief 
or  suspicion,  which  at  present  is  the  parent  of  unrest, 
that,  instead  of  being  a  gainer  by  the  existing  system, 
he  is  a  loser.     It  would  enable  him  to  recognise  for 
himself,  with  his  eyes  open,  his  lot  under  that  system  as 
the  best  which  was  for  the  time  possible;  and,  so  far 
as  knowledge  and  common  sense  are  concerned,  we  shall 
have  the  warrant  of  all  history  for  saying  that  the  wage- 
earners  of  the  modern  world,  from  the  earners  of  the 
minimum  upwards,  would  tend  to  accept  with  content, 
were  their  judgments  not  otherwise  disturbed,  such  con- 
ditions as,  lying  within  the  limits  of  recognised  possi- 
bilities, were  the  best. 

Such  would  be  the  case  if  men's  judgments  were  not 
otherwise  disturbed;  but,  whilst  knowledge  and  com- 
mon sense  might  tend  to  produce  content  with  the  best 
conditions,  and  more  particularly  with  the  amplest 
niinimum,  definitely  known  to  be  possible,  the  imagina- 
tion, as  a  disturbing  influence,  has  still  to  be  reckoned 
with.  A  natural  tendency  to  content,  as  the  joint  result 
of  knowledge  and  common  sense,  being  given,  the  mood 
of  mind  which  the  imagination,  if  improperly  trained, 
and  imaginative  ambition,  if  indiscriminately  stimulated, 
would  naturally  tend  to  foment,  might  not,  indeed, 
disturb  the  conviction  that  the  existing  order  of  things 
was  the  best  order  possible,  and  that  any  revolutionary 
change  could  only  be  a  change  for  the  worse ;  but  what 


I  { 


324     LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 

it   would   do   is   this :    it   would   always   be   prompting 
multitudes  to  resent  the  best  as  bad.     It  would  be  a 
mood  resembling  that  which  was  tersely  expressed  by 
the   distinguished   but   irritable   scholar,   Porson,   when 
he  spilled,  by  an  untoward  gesture,  the  contents  of  his 
ink-pot  over  the  pages  of  a  Greek  play.     This  ornament 
of  learning,  having  for  some  moments  sought  in  vain 
for  something  on  which  he  might  vent  his  rage,  finally 
astonished  a  friend  by  ejaculating,  "Damn  the  nature 
of  things."     A  society  would  hardly  be  in  a  condition 
of  corporate  harmony  and  content  if  any  considerable 
section  of  it,  whilst  accepting  their  respective  lots  as 
unalterable  parts  of  the  nature  of  things,  were  all  the 
while  in  a  mood  of  imaginative  rebellion  against  them ; 
and  much  of  the  social  unrest  which  prevails  in  the 
modern  world  is  due,  not  to  the  fact  that  the  conditions 
of  the  persons  afflicted  by  it  are  insufficient  in  them- 
selves as  the  material  apparatus  of  happiness,  but  to 
the  fact  that  the  imagination  of  such  persons,  artificially 
inflamed  or  not  reasonably  disciplined,  makes  the  good 
seem  despicable  by  obtruding  on  them,  as  the  standard 
of  goodness,  some  visionary  and  impracticable  better. 

Now,  to  train  the  imagination  in  such  a  way  as  to 
adjust  its  suggestions  to  limiting  facts  of  life  may  seem, 
at  first  sight,  a  much  more  difficult  task  than  that  of 
training  mere  judgment  by  making  the  facts  known. 
Indeed,   a  universal   adjustment  of   imaginative   desire 
to  facts  is  beyond  the  power  of  any  education  to  accom- 
plish.    There  will  always  be  people  in  the  world  who 
can  never  produce  the  wealth  or  secure  the  social  estima- 
tion which  they  obstinately  imagine  to  be  their  due. 
But  an  imaginative  content  with  facts,  which  is  at  once 
approximately  general  and  sufficient  for  the  happiness 
of  those  who  have  it  in  their  hearts  to  be  happy,  is  a 
result  so  far  from  impossible  that  it  would,  in  most 
cases,  tend  to  occur  naturally  if  a  false  education  were 
not  at  work  to  prevent  it.     That  is  to  say,  a  proper 
training  of  the  imagination,  especially  with  regard  to 
the  conditions  represented  by  the  minimum  wage,  would 
have  for  its  object,  not  the  creation  of  any  mood  that 
was  artificial,  but  the  healthy  development  of  one  to 
which  most  men  naturally  incline. 


DISEASES   OF  THE   IMAGINATION    325 


With  this  object  in  view,  such  a  training  of  the  ima- 
gination would  resolve  itself  into  two  parts,  one  of  which 
would  relate  to  the  material  circumstance  of  life,  the 
other  to  its  moral,  emotional  and  intellectual  interests. 

To  begin  with  the  former,  there  is  a  certain  tendency 
in  most  men,  with  regard  to  their  material  circum- 
stances, to  cherish  an  ideal  somewhat  more  ample  than 
any  which  they  stand  much  chance  of  realising;  and  if 
their  ideal  is  not  taken  too  seriously,  or  if  it  does  not 
exceed  the  possible  in  any  very  great  degree,  it  does 
little  or  nothing  to  interfere  with  a  spirit  of  reasonable 
content.  But  certain  forces  at  work  in  the  modern 
world  express  themselves  in  a  scheme  of  deliberate  and 
emphatic  teaching  which  aims  at  developing  this  ten- 
dency to  a  degree  so  extreme  and  unnatural  that  multi- 
tudes are  led  to  adopt,  as  the  standard  of  a  satisfactory 
life,  a  life  equipped  with  appliances  which,  from  the 
nature  of  things,  are  possible  for  a  few  men  only,  and 
thus  to  regard  all  lives  from  which  such  appliances  are 
absent  as  lives  unnaturally  blighted,  or  deprived  of 
adjuncts  which  human  nature  requires. 

As  an  example  of  the  mood  resulting  from  this  falsi- 
fication of  values,  mention  may  be  made  of  an  expert 
who,  when  called  on  to  give  evidence  in  a  law-suit 
relating  to  the  cost  of  repainting  a  yacht  of  six  hundred 
tons,  described  himself  as  "one  of  those  unfortunate 
persons  whose  business  is  to  build  great  yachts,  not  as 
one  of  the  fortunate  persons  who  own  them."  Now,  it 
may  fairly  be  said  of  a  man  who  is  a  good  sailor  that, 
if  he  owns  a  yacht  of  six  hundred  tons  he  is  fortunate ; 
but  if  everybody  who  does  not  own  one  is  to  be  looked 
on  as  unfortunate,  the  whole  of  the  human  race  is  un- 
fortunate except  a  little  cluster  of  persons  whose  names 
are  comprised  in  a  page  or  two  of  The  Yachting  Calendar, 
and  who  might  dine  together  at  the  same  table  in  the 
local  Assembly  Rooms  of  any  small  provincial  town. 

Another  example,  less  extreme  than  this,  may  be  cited 
from  a  book  in  which  the  author,  a  semi-socialist  radical, 
living  himself  on  large  official  emoluments,  described 
the  typical  dwellings  of  the  skilled  artisans  of  England. 
He  did  not  deny  that  their  houses,  situated  for  the  most 
part  in  the  outskirts  of  manufacturing  centres,  are,  so 


826     LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 


far  as  they  go,  substantial,  well-planned  and  sufficient 
for  a  decent  and  comfortable  life ;  but,  with  a  sigh  of 
condescending  pity,  he  described  their  dimensions  as 
"tiny."  Now,  as  compared  with  Buckingham  Palace 
or  Blenheim,  most  houses  are  tiny ;  and  the  houses  here 
in  question  are  no  doubt  tiny  as  compared  with  the 
author's  own.  But  should  one  of  these  houses  be  turned 
into  steel  and  wood,  and  placed  on  the  upper  deck  of  a 
great  Atlantic  liner,  it  would  at  once  assume  the  pro- 
portions of  an  enormous  family  suite,  and  a  rich  Ameri- 
can traveller  would  pay  eight  hundred  pounds  as  the 
price  of  enjoying  its  amplitude  for  the  inside  of  a  week. 
House-space  which,  if  none  ampler  were  possible,  would 
be  looked  on  as  a  luxury  by  the  most  exacting  of  pluto- 
crats, must,  unless  the  popular  imagination  is  disordered 
by  artificial  suggestion,  be  not  "tiny,"  but  ample,  for 
the  majority  of  the  human  race.  The  only  sane  standard, 
by  reference  to  which  the  typical  dwelling  sufficient  for 
the  normal  man  can  be  measured,  is  not  any  type  of 
dwelling  which  is  possible  for  this  or  for  that  minority 
whose  efficiencies  are,  to  some  marked  degree,  excep- 
tional; but  the  best  type  of  dwelling  which  is  possible 
for  any  numerous  and  necessary  class  whose  efficiencies, 
to  speak  broadly,  do  not  exceed  the  average.  This  is 
a  fact  which  most  men  naturally  tend  to  recognise ;  and 
the  mental  disease  which,  by  suggesting  as  a  standard 
of  sufficiency  conditions  which  must  always  be  at  least 
relatively  rare,  renders  the  best  conditions  susceptible 
of  common  achievement  despicable,  is  largely  due  to  a 
deliberate  campaign  of  education,  which  aims  at  training 
the  imagination,  not  rightly,  but  wrongly. 

This  kind  of  mal-education  (as  observers  in  various 
countries  and  at  various  times  have  noted)  is  due  mainly 
to  the  pathological  activities,  not  of  the  masses,  but  of 
certain  peculiar  sections  of  the  middle  class;  and  that 
such  is  the  case  may  be  seen  by  reference  to  a  very 
interesting  agitation,  in  which,  though  middle-class 
activities  were  very  largely  concerned  in  it,  this  par- 
ticular kind  of  mal-education  was  absent.  This  was  the 
agitation  which,  beginning  about  the  year  1880,  was 
directed  against  the  landlords  of  the  mountainous  parts 
of  Scotland.     The  charge  against  the  landlords  was  that, 


TRAINING   THE   IMAGINATION     327 


for  the  purpose  of  increasing  their  rent-rolls,  they  had 
evicted  their  tenants  wholesale — their  tenants  who  were 
also  their  clansmen — and  had  converted  entire  counties 
into  playgrounds  for  rich  sportsmen.  Few  agitations 
have  ever  been  based  on  arguments  in  which  elements 
of  undoubted  truth  were  seasoned  with  wilder  false- 
hoods; but  there  was  one  fact — and  this,  even  if  some- 
what exaggerated,  was  indisputable — which  the  agitators, 
most  of  them  Scotchmen,  put  before  all  others,  as 
familiar  to  them  from  their  own  experience.  This  was 
the  fact  that  the  men  who  had  been  driven  from  their 
homes  had  been  one  of  the  happiest,  the  healthiest  and 
the  most  contented  peasantries  in  the  world.  And  yet 
what  sort  of  homes  were  these  in  which  so  much  content 
sheltered  itself  ?  Compared  even  with  those  of  the 
poorest  peasants  of  England,  they  were  not  only  "  tiny," 
but  rude  to  an  extreme  degree.  They  were  cabins  whose 
chimneys  were  mere  holes  in  the  thatch;  the  occupants 
lived  mainly  on  oatmeal  and  potatoes;  and  yet  not 
only  w^as  their  lot  one  to  which  they  were  passionately 
attached  themselves,  but,  despite  its  primitive  sim- 
plicity, it  was  proclaimed  by  a  succession  of  agitators 
to  have  been  one  so  worthy  of  men  as  moral  and  social 
beings  that  few  crimes  could  be  greater  than  those  which 
had  put  an  end  to  it.  Here,  then,  in  the  persons  both 
of  the  Highland  peasantry  themselves,  and  of  the  agita- 
tors closely  connected  with  them  who  spoke  with  such 
vehemence  on  their  behalf,  we  have  examples  of  the 
mental  process  on  which,  certain  material  circumstances 
being  given,  men's  content  with  such  circumstances 
tends  naturally  to  depend.  It  is  a  process  consisting 
of  certain  uses  of  the  imagination  which  with  most  men 
are  instinctive,  and  which  cause  them  to  identify  the 
conditions  of  a  satisfactory  life  with  the  best,  even  if 
these  be  simple,  which  life  with  its  affections  and 
memories  has  rendered  to  them  familiar,  and  which  the 
circle  of  possibilities  encloses  within  its  horizon  line.  It 
is  an  imaginative  process  the  precise  reverse  of  that  by 
which  middle-class  apostles  of  discontent  would  stimu- 
late men  to  despise  houses  as  "tiny  "  which  have  four 
times  as  many  rooms  in  them  as  the  houses  for  which 
the  Highland  peasantry,  when  compelled  to  leave  them, 


Ir^ 


328     LIMITS    OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 

wept,  and  which  agitators  themselves  belauded  as  homes 
of  ideal  happiness.  So  far,  then,  as  material  things  are 
concerned  —  and  by  material  things  is  here  meant 
primarily  what  is  the  key  to  the  whole  situation,  namely, 
the  material  things  purchasable  by  a  just  minimum 
wage  for  the  workers  of  least  efficiency — such  training 
of  the  imagination  as  would  be  necessary  to  promote  con- 
tent with  these,  would  be  necessary,  not  for  the  purpose 
of  creating  in  men  any  mood  that  is  new,  or  over- 
strained, or  artificial,  but  simply  for  the  purpose  of 
restoring  them,  as  sober  and  sensible  beings,  to  a  mood 
of  mind  which  is,  to  most  men,  natural. 

But  in  concerning  itself  merely  with  material  circum- 
stances as  such — that  is  to  say,  with  such  things  as  can 
be  rneasured  and  bought  by  wages — an  educational 
training  of  the  imagination  as  a  means  to  general  content 
will,  if  it  goes  no  further,  have  done  but  half  its  work. 
The  more  important  half  remains,  and  this  will  consist 
in  fixing  the  imaginative  attention  and  interest  on  those 
affections,  passions,  faiths,  social  excitements,  recrea- 
tions and  other  self-fruitions,  which  are  to  material 
circumstances  what  drink  is  to  the  cup  that  holds  it,  and 
without  which  a  goblet  of  the  costliest  crystal  in  a  palace 
would  be  as  useless  to  a  thirsty  man  as  an  earthenware 
mug  in  the  kitchen  of  a  "tiny  "  cottage. 

In  any  case,  a  certain  minimum  of  material  circum- 
stances must  be  given.  This,  in  any  country  which  is 
enriched  by  the  forces  of  industrial  oligarchy,  must,  let 
it  be  said  again,  be  a  minimum  which  fulfils,  or  is 
associated  with  the  following  primary  requirements.  It 
must  represent  a  material  lot  which  is  not  only  free 
from  physical  want  and,  so  far  as  may  be,  from  the  fear 
of  it,  but  is  also  much  ampler,  so  far  as  amplitude  can 
be  bought  by  wages,  than  any  which  the  wage-earners 
could  secure  if  they  worked  as  their  own  masters.  It 
must,  moreover,  be  one  which  all  exceptional  workers 
shall  have  the  means  of  amplifying  in  accordance  with 
what  their  work  is  worth;  and  with  these  conditions 
must  be  associated  a  diffusion  amongst  the  wage-earners 
generally  of  such  elementary  knowledge  with  regard  to 
statistical  facts,  and  the  manual  and  mental  forces 
on  which  efficient  production  depends,  as  will  enable 


THE   FINAL   LIFE-PROCESS         329 

them   to   estimate   accurately   their   own   situation   for 
themselves. 

Should  such  conditions  be  established— and  they  are 
conditions  which  would  subserve  all  interests  and  at  the 
same  time  antagonise  none— whatever  is  valuable  and 
practicable  in  the  ideals  of  formal  socialism— ideals  in 
themselves  impossible  and  self-destructive — would  be 
secured ;  and  the  causes  of  "  industrial  unrest,"  in  so  far 
as  they  are  capable  of  being  expressed  in  any  definite 
terms,  would  be  removed.  We  shall  have  an  established 
order  to  which,  with  all  its  graduations  of  circumstance, 
common  sense  would  resign  itself.  But  if  the  imagina- 
tion is  to  complete  what  common  sense  has  begun,  and 
convert  resignation  into  an  acceptance  which  deserves 
to  be  called  content,  it  must  not  concern  itself  with 
economic  circumstances  alone.  The  interplay  of  oli- 
garchic and  democratic  forces  to  which  the  magnitude 
and  graduated  distribution  of  modern  wealth  are  due 
is  but  one  nianifestation  of  a  process  which  is  much  more 
comprehensive ;  and  if  the  imagination  is  really  to  grasp 
its  full  significance,  the  imagination  must  be  trained  to 
grasp  it  as  part  of  a  larger  whole.  When  this  process 
has  been  considered  in  all  its  various  forms,  what  we 
shall  find  is  this — that,  as  means  to  a  certain  complex 
end,  the  oligarchic  principle  permeates  every  domain  of 
life,  but  that  the  final  end  itself  which  these  oligarchic 
means  subserve  is,  in  its  very  essence,  democratic— that 
it  is  a  life-process  in  which  genuine  democracy  at  last 
comes  into  its  own. 

Of  what,  then,  does  this  life-process  consist  ? 


.'  I 


'^-' 


BOOK   VII 

DEMOCRACY  AND  THE  FINAL  LIFE-PROCESS 


CHAPTER   I 

THE   MATERIAL   DATA   OF   CONTENT 

All  life  implies  the  will  to  live.  This  in  itself  can 
hardly  be  called  rational,  for  all  living  things,  even  the 
lowest,  possess  it.  If  a  kitten  and  a  philosopher  are 
thrown  into  deep  water,  both  will  struggle  to  save  them- 
selves in  substantially  the  same  way.  But  in  man  the 
will  to  live  is,  under  normal  circumstances,  rational  in 
the  sense  that  the  enjoyment  of  life  is  consciously  dis- 
tinguished alike  from  the  bare  fact,  and  from  the 
material  means,  simple  or  elaborate,  of  its  maintenance. 
The  poorest  peasant  who  can  by  his  constant  labour  just 
provide  food  and  firewood  for  himself  and  a  single  child, 
would,  if  the  child  died,  miss  it;  and,  looking  at  its 
empty  chair,  he  would  find  that  life,  no  matter  how 
hard,  had  held  for  him  something  more  than  the  act 
of  laborious  living.  A  celebrated  English  statesman, 
wealthy  and  highly  placed,  found,  when  his  character 
had  been  blighted  by  the  breath  of  malignant  slander, 
that  of  all  the  luxuries  in  his  bedroom  one  alone  was  of 
service  to  him,  and  this  was  the  razor  which  he  drew 
across  his  own  throat. 

However  simple,  then,  or  however  elaborate  the  ma- 
terial appliances  or  adjuncts  of  men's  lives  may  be,  the 
human  satisfaction  to  which  they  minister  consists  of 
a  something  which,  in  one  way  or  another,  men  them- 
selves add  to  them  out  of  their  own  natures  :  and,  if  two 
words  are  taken  so  as  to  cover  all  that  is  implied  in  them, 
this  something  may  be  described  as  social  intercourse. 

It  is  for  the  sake  of  social  intercourse  that  men  are, 

330 


MECHANISMS   OF   SOCIETY         331 

as    Aristotle    says    of    them,    "gregarious    or    political 
animals."    Their  instinct  is  to  live  in  clusters  of  more 
or  less  adjacent  families,  each  family  maintaining  itself 
by  applying  its  own  industry  to  some  particular  portion 
of  a  limited  geographical  area.     Men  experience  in  so 
living  the  need  of  conformity  to  certain  common  cus- 
toms ;  customs  mature  into  a  system  of  definite  laws  and 
government ;  and  as  soon  as  any  one  cluster,  on  coming 
into  contact  with  another,  arms  itself,  for  the  protection 
of  its  territory,  as  a  single  military  force,  the  cluster 
becomes  what  is  commonly  called  a  State.     But  neither 
the  military  system  nor  the  legal  system  nor  the  in- 
dustrial   system    is    an    end    in    itself.      These,    taken 
together,  are  merely  the  shell  of  the  nut.     Social  inter- 
course   is   the   kernel — social    intercourse    or,    in   other 
words,   all  those  affections,   activities   and  experiences 
which  constitute  the  drama  of  private  or  individual  life 
which  directly  minister  to  its  amenities,  or  which  other- 
wise raise  its  character.    The  end  of  all  political  govern- 
ment is  to  regularise  these.     The  end  of  all  armed  force 
is  to  protect  them,  or  possibly  to  provide  them  with  an 
ampler  field  for  their  exercise.     A  State  which  had  no 
lovers  in  it  would  not  be  worth  fighting  for ;  but  a  State 
might   be   worth   fighting  for  although  there  were  no 
fighters   in   it,    if   the   lack   of   fighters   was    due — and 
such  for  many  years  was  the  case  of  the  United  States 
— to   geographical   conditions   which   rendered   fighters 
superfluous. 

Social  intercourse  is,  however,  not  self-supporting  any 
more  than  it  is  self-regulating  or  self-protecting.  It 
must  have,  as  its  immediate  basis,  an  industrial  system 
which  provides  it  with  its  material  appliances.  It 
depends,  therefore,  for  its  existence  and  security  on 
three  processes  external  to  itself,  which  are  these  :  in- 
dustrial production,  political  government,  and  the 
process,  actual  or  potential,  of  offensive  or  defensive 
war. 

Now  the  process  of  war,  even  amongst  the  simplest 
tribes,  has  always  been  in  a  large  measure  oligarchic. 
In  modern  warfare,  which  becomes  ever  more  and  more 
a  matter  of  industrial  as  well  as  of  military  genius,  the 
oligarchic  element  becomes  more  and  more  pronounced. 


i 


332     LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 


J  ! 


Political  government,  and  industry  in  times  of  peace — 
both  of  them  processes  of  almost  pure  democracy  so  long 
as  States  are  primitively  small  and  men  primitively  poor 
— become  more  and  more  oligarchic  as  States  increase 
in  size,  and  poverty  is  metamorphosed  into  wealth  such 
as  that  of  the  modern  world.  In  other  words,  if  we 
consider  men  as  agents  capable  of  affecting  the  external 
conditions  of  life  and  of  social  intercourse,  as  distin- 
guished from  life  and  from  social  intercourse  themselves, 
the  majority  of  the  citizens  in  any  modern  country  will 
not  only  be  undistinguished  and  obscure  (as  everybody 
must  be  whose  talents  are  not  exceptional) ;  they  will 
also  be  persons  who  in  some  sense  are  subordinates.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  units  of  the  minority,  from  the 
specially  skilled  labourers  up  to  the  higher  directorates, 
will  necessarily  be  persons  of  some  sort  of  distinction, 
and  in  the  material  appliances  of  their  lives  these 
graduations  of  function  and  of  personal  efficiency  will 
be  reflected.  The  minimum  may  increase  with  the 
increase  of  the  total  produce,  but  between  the  minimum 
of  individual  circumstance  and  the  maximum  the  differ- 
ence, instead  of  decreasing,  may  tend  to  become  greater. 
In  other  words,  if  we  consider  men  merely  as  agents 
maintaining  and  amplifying,  according  to  their  several 
capacities,  the  material  appliances  of  life,  the  spectacular 
signs  of  oligarchy  will  be  more  clearly  apparent  than  the 
spectacular  signs  of  democracy.  But  if,  instead  of  con- 
sidering men  as  agents  whose  function  is  to  affect  the 
external  conditions  of  life,  we  consider  them  as  par- 
ticipators in  the  social  intercourse  itself  to  which  external 
conditions  minister,  the  case  will  be  reversed.  The 
actualities  of  democracy  will  obliterate,  if  not  the  signs, 
yet  at  all  events  the  actualities  of  oligarchy. 

This  proposition  to  many  may  no  doubt  seem  a 
paradox.  They  may  urge  that,  so  long  as  absolute 
differences  in  external  conditions  exist,  it  is  precisely  in 
social  intercourse  that  the  special  results  of  an  oligarchy 
most  sharply  obtrude  themselves.  But  persons  who 
argue  thus  confuse  actualities  with  abstractions.  By  a 
certain  subconscious  juggling  with  the  ambiguous  word 
"  Society,"  which  may  mean  either  the  State  as  a  means, 
or  social  intercourse  as  an  end,  they  come  to  regard  the 


!L 


UNITS  OF  SOCIAL  INTERCOURSE    333 

latter  as  a  power  coextensive  with  the  former,  so  that 
social  intercourse,  taking  place  within  the  limits  of  a 
great  nation,  is,  according  to  their  conception  of  it,  one 
undivided  process  m  which  all  classes  participate.     Now 
If,  with  regard  to  any  great  and  complex  community, 
this   conception   of   social   intercourse   really   coincided 
with  fact— if  the  members  of  all  classes,  in  taking  their 
daily  pleasure,  were  jostled  together  in  a  kind  of  col- 
lective outmg,  the  differences  between  class  and  class 
would.  It  IS  quite  true,  be  not  expunged  but  accentuated. 
Ihe  result  would  be  aggressions  of  undesired  familiari- 
ties or  repulsions  of  them,  rather  than  anything  in  the 
way  of  promiscuous  concord.     But  in  no  community 
larger  than  that  of  a  small  village— in  no  great  country 
of  any  kind— does  social  intercourse  take  such  a  form  as 
this,     i^  or  each  individual  it  begins  with  his  own  family 
circle,  and  thence  extends  itself  gradually  to  a  larger 
circle  of  acquaintances,  lovers,  friends,  and  habitual  or 
casual  associates ;  and  for  each  individual  this  larger  but 
narrowly  limited  circle  comprises  the  actors  with  whom, 
and  with  a  view  to  whose  esteem,  affection  or  applause, 
that  drania  is  played  by  him  for  the  sake  of  which  in- 
dustrial oligarchies  and  political  oligarchies  exist.     For 
each  individual  the  number  of  such  fellow  actors,  or  the 
content  of  what  is  for  him  society,  is  thus  strictly  limited 
for  the   very   simple   reason   that,   except   in   a  public 
capacity,  no  one  human  being  can  be  known  as  a  person- 
ality or  a  personage  to  more  than  a  number,  compara- 
tively small,  of  others.     Hence,  so  far  as  social  inter- 
course is  concerned,  any  large  community,  such  as  a 
great  nation,   automatically  divides  itself  into  a  vast 
number   of   small   ones.     These   sub-communities,   con- 
sisting of  kindred,  friends,  and  acquaintances,  will  differ 
m  respect  of  the  number  of  units  comprised  in  each. 
We   may,   however,   say   roughly  that   the   number   of 
persons  with  whom,  on  an  average,  each  man  lives  on 
terms  of  familiar  intercourse  will  not  be  more  than  some 
two  hundred  and  fifty.     Each  of  such  communities,  as 
a  part  of  the  body  politic,  will  resemble  a  complex  cell 
having  a  private  social  life,  more  or  less  separate,  of  its 
own ;  and  a  great  national  community,  such  as  that  of 
France  or  the  United  Kingdom,  will,  so  far  as  social 


11 


t 

iiii 


334     LIMITS   OF^PURE   DEMOCRACY 

intercourse  is  concerned,  be  an  aggregate  of  some  two 
hundred  thousand  cells  or  sub-communities  such  as 
these,  though  the  national  life,  industrial,  political  and 
military,  which  protects  and  subserves  the  interests  of 

each  social  cell,  is  one. 

By  what,  then,  is  the  composition  of  each  of  these 
social   cells   determined?     It   is   determined   partly   by 
family  ties  and  familiarities,  partly  by  continued  pro- 
pinquity and  the  physical  possibilities  of  more  or  less 
frequent  companionship,  partly  by  similarities  of  wealth 
and  the  habits  of  life  dependent  on  it,  and  largely,  also, 
by   similarities   of   taste    and   of   moral    temperament. 
Thus,  if  we  take  '^  society  "  in  the  aristocratic  sense  of 
the  word,  as  a  small  group  of  persons  distinguished  by 
wealth,  rank  or  lineage,  there  is  a  constant  tendency 
amongst    its    members,    despite    these    similarities,    to 
separate  into  what  are  called  "  sets,"  such  as  an  ultra- 
fashionable  set,  an  intellectual  set,  a  racing  set,  and  so 
on.     But,  whatever  may  be  its  principle  of  cohesion,  the 
members  of  each  sub-community  are,  for  purposes  of 
social    intercourse,    equals.'      Their    intercourse    is    an 
exhibition  of  what  they  are,  not  of  what  they  do  or  have 
done.     It   is   an   interplay   of   lateral    varieties,    not   a 
parade  of  vertical  inequalities.     A  statesman,  when  in 
society  he  is  talking  to  a  charming  woman,  desires  to 
exhibit  himself  not  as  a  statesman,  but  as  a  man.     A 
woman  famous  for  her  exploits  in  the  world  of  County 
Councils  would  far  rather  be  taken  in  society  as  a  woman 
of  personal  charm  than  as  a  walking  index  to  her  own 
Minutes  on  Education.    An  artisan  obscure  in  a  factory 
may,  in  his  social  life,  be  the  hero  of  a  woman's  affec- 
tions.    Anybody  in  social  life  may  become  unique  for 
somebody.     Within  the  limits,  then,  of  each  of  those 
countless  sub-communities  beyond  which  no  social  inter- 
course of  an  intimate  kind  is  possible,  social  intercourse 
is  democratic  in  this  fundamental  sense,  that  each  unit 
taking  part  in  the  process  is  a  unit  of  free  and  equal 
influence  in  respect  of  the  object  which  each  unit  has  in 

1  Thus  Louis  XV,  when  he  played  the  part  of  private  host  in  the 
country,  placed  his  guests  at  dinner,  on  the  first  day  of  the  visit, 
according  to  their  technical  rank,  but  afterwards  according  to  royal 
and  other  personal  preferences. 


1 


SOCIAL  LIFE   AND   INDUSTRY     335 

view— that  object  being  to  make  the  best  he  can  of  his 
own  personal  character  either  as  a  husband,  a  father,  a 
lover,  a  wit,  a  conversationalist,  a  boon  companion,  or 
a  man  of  respected  judgment. 

But  this  process  of  social  intercourse  is  democratic,  not 
only  in  the  sense  that  the  units  of  each  sub-community 
who  play  a  part  in  it  act  as  equals  in  respect  of  the 
process  itself.     It  is  democratic  in  the  sense  that  the 
units,  taken  collectively,  also  constitute  a  democracy  the 
force  of  which  is  external.     We  shall  find  that  the  units, 
m  using,  as  the  material  basis  of  their  lives,  those  in- 
dustrial activities  to  which,  in  any  rich  country,  the 
principle  of  oligarchy  is  essential,  not  only  make  use  of 
the  services  which  the  industrial  oligarchy  offers  them, 
but  also  determine  ultimately  what  the  nature  of  these 
services  shall  be.     Nor  does  this  hold  good  of  the  Indus- 
trial  oligarchy  only.     It  holds  good  of  other  services 
also,  which  are  no  less  essential  than  industry  to  civilised 
social  intercourse,  which  are  likewise  oligarchic  in  origin, 
likewise  democratic  in  result,  and  to  which  reference, 
except  by  implication,  has,  in  our  present  argument, 
not  yet   been   made.      These   are  the  processes,   intel- 
lectual, aesthetic  and  moral,  the  results  of  which  are 
familiar  to  us  as  knowledge,  philosophy,  science,  art, 
religion.     Each  of  these  results  which,  as  elements  of 
civilisation,  are  no  less  important  than  an  ample  mini- 
mum wage,  has  everywhere  a  history  from  which  the 
action  of  oligarchy  is  inseparable;  and  yet,  as  an  ele- 
ment of  civilisation,  each  is  what  it  is— and  is  what  it  is 
only— through  the  action  of  forces  which  are,  in  their 
essence,  democratic. 

Let  us  consider  first  the  influence  of  the  democratic 
principle,  as  embodied  in  social  intercourse,  on  the  in- 
dustrial oligarchy  which,  in  a  civilised  modern  country, 
provides  it  with  the  larger  part  of  the  material  adjuncts 
of  its  existence. 

A  rudimentary  illustration  of  this  influence  may  be 
found  m  the  relation  of  social  intercourse  to  architecture. 
Social  intercourse  always  begins  with  the  family.  It 
does  so  because  human  beings  are  all  of  them  born  and 
reared  in  essentially  the  same  way ;  and  the  spontaneous 
unity  of  the  family  everywhere  finds  expression  in  the 


336     LIMITS   OF   PURE  DEMOCRACY 

separate  house  or  hut,  which  primitively  is  a  single 
room.  As  social  civilisation  advahces — as  comforts  and 
decencies  are  added  to  bare  necessaries — the  spontaneous 
habits  of  the  family  find  expression  in  the  house,  larger 
and  more  elaborate,  which  has  two  rooms  or  several. 
That  is  to  say,  in  proportion  as  the  productive  powers 
of  the  architect  or  the  builder  increase,  the  democracy 
of  social  intercourse  exercises  a  more  elaborate  control 
over  the  final  uses  to  which  these  powers  shall  be  put. 
Wealth,  as  embodied  in  a  house,  becomes  a  commodity 
of  a  more  elaborate  kind. 

Here  is  a  fact  which  most  thinkers  wholly  fail  to 
recognise.  They  fail  to  recognise  that  as,  under  the 
influence  of  an  industrial  oligarchy,  the  volume  of  wealth 
increases,  wealth,  taken  as  a  whole,  undergoes  in  one 
respect  a  fundamental  change  in  character.  To  this 
imperfection  of  thought  attention  has  been  called 
already,  in  connection  with  Mr.  Shaw's  exposition  of 
what,  in  respect  of  the  distribution  of  wealth,  ideal 
socialism  or  social  democracy  means.  The  ideal  object 
of  socialism  is,  he  says,  to  secure  for  all  an  absolute 
equality  in  respect  of  material  circumstances,  which 
equality,  as  measurable  by  "coin"  or  some  other 
medium  of  exchange,  will  be  for  each  individual  "the 
quotient  of  the  national  income  divided  by  the  number 
of  the  population."  That  is  to  say,  he,  and  those  who 
reason  like  him,  think  of  the  income  of  a  nation  as 
though  it  were  a  sort  of  homogeneous  fluid  such  as  water, 
any  one  gallon  of  which  would  be  throughout  of  the  same 
substance  as  any  other.  And  in  the  case  of  a  country 
so  primitively  poor  that  the  entire  income  of  the  inhabit- 
ants was  but  just  sufficient  to  keep  them  all  alive,  such 
a  conception  would  be  no  doubt  correct.  It  is,  however, 
correct  in  the  case  of  such  a  country  only. 

Even  in  a  country  whose  condition  is  one  of  primitive 
poverty,  income,  as  measured  by  money,  is  a  mere  sign 
or  abstraction.  Its  substance  is  a  certain  quantity  of 
certain  specified  goods ;  and  all  incomes  the  substance  of 
which  does  not  consist  solely  of  irreducible  necessaries, 
are  divisible  into  two  elements — necessary  goods  and 
superfluous  goods.  Now  in  any  given  country  or  climate, 
the  goods  which  are  necessary  for  a  life  just  above  the 


I 


REAL  INCOME  AND  MONEY      337 

irrLnecrhotf^^f''t^'i'"''j'''P  are  practically  constant 

in  respect  both  of  kind  and  quant  ty.     Hence,  in  nro- 

portion  as  industry  becomes  more  and  more  productive, 

and  the  income  per  head  of  the  totai  population  in- 

rroH  '\'f''^^<^^  ot  the  increment  conSts  who ?y 

fln^c       TK  '''',*'^'  ^"^  ^  ^^^t^*"  o"-  less  degree,  super- 

tho^^^A  J^^    "'!"?""*    T*^''^^    ''""^i^t^    «f    necessaries, 

h3.  r     "^T''}  ^'?'"  .*^^  "**"''^  «*  things  suffer  any 

diminution  absolutely,  is  always  decreasing  relatively, 

and  the  element  which  consists  of  superfluities  is  always 

becoming  a  larger  fraction  of  the  total.     Thus,  if  we  take 

lor  example  the  average  income  per  head  of  the  popula- 

tu,n  of  England,  firstly  as  it  was  at  the  beginning  of  the 

n  nf ""?  tK'"l*"'"^:-^"u^  '"*=°"'^>y  ^«  't  ^'^s  at  thf  begin! 
ning   of  the   twentieth,   we   may   say,    with   very   fair 

llZlTf'  that  superfluities  at  the  later  date  made  up 

a  quarter  '  ^*  *^^  ^^'"^^  °*'*  "^'^  than 

Now  the  enormous  increase  in  income  which,  typified 

by  the  case  of  England,  has  taken  place  since  theSn- 

H,A°U  .°'"^*^^,"*K*'^"*"'^'  and  ^hich  is  primarily 
due  to  the  forces  of  industrial  oligarchy,  does  not  neces- 
sarily mean  the  production  of  better  goods,  for  the 
products  o  the  self-directed  craftsman  are  in  some 
respects  still  unequalled.     The  most  obvious  funS 

K  „f '^  K  ^^^'■''''y  ^^^  '"f"  to  increase  their  number; 
but  It  has,  in  increasing  their  number,  performed  another 
function  also,  which,  though  less  obvious,  is  morally  of 
far  greater  importance.     Besides  increasing  the  nuniber 

extent  "^1''"'%^^^  products,  it  has,  to\n  indefinite 
extent,  diversified  them.  Thus,  to  take,  for  example, 
such  ornaments  as  are  used  to  decorate  chimneypieces- 
let  us  say  chma  figures  of  Nelson-it  has  not  only  multi- 
plied china  Nelsons  and  cheapened  them,  thus  putting 
them  withm  the  reach  of  an  increasing  number  of  people! 
It  has  supplemented  the  Nelsons  by  a  hundred  other 
fagures  of  human  or  other  creatures— such  as  bishops, 
nymphs,  missionaries,  milkmaids,  cows,  kittens— which 
are  offered  to  the  taste  of  the  purchasing  public  as  alter- 
natives, and  from  which  each  purchaser  will  make  his 
own  selection. 

Thus  the  two  elements  of  which  a  typical  income  in 


(  a. 


338     LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

any  rich  country  is  composed  differ  not  only  in  the  fact 
that  the  one  consists  of  necessaries  which  represent  men's 
needs,  and  the  other  of  superfluities  which  represent 
men's  tastes,  but  also  in  the  further  fact  that,  whereas 
the  goods  which  satisfy  men's  needs  are  not  only  con- 
stant in  quantity,  but  constant  in  kind  also,  the  things 
which  gratify  their  tastes  are,  if  considered  generally, 
never  the  same  from  one  ten  years  to  another,  and  are, 
if  considered  particularly,  never  the  same  in  the  case  of 
any  two  individuals. 

Apart  from  certain  durable  things  like  houses,  the  real 
income  of  a  nation  in  any  given  year  is  comprised  in  the 
goods  of  all  kinds  and  descriptions  offered  for  sale  in  all 
the  shops  of  the  country ;  and  the  actual  substance  of 
each  individual  income  will  consist  of  such  of  these  goods 
as  each  person,  or  each  head  of  a  household,  brings 
home  for  use  in  the  course  of  a  year's  shopping.  Let  us 
suppose,  for  example,  that  the  necessaries  and  super- 
fluities, which  form  the  real  income  of  a  nation  for  some 
particular  year,  are  represented  by  four  groups  of  com- 
modities displayed  on  a  shop's  counter.  Each  of  these 
groups,  let  us  say,  is  made  up  of  ten  units,  and  the 
price  of  every  unit  is,  let  us  say,  five  shillings.  The  first 
group  consists  of  bread,  and  represents  all  necessaries. 
The  three  others,  representing  all  superfluities,  consist 
respectively  of  ten  lengths  of  green  silk  ribbon,  ten 
boxes  of  chocolates,  and  ten  books — copies  of  the  works 
of  Shakespeare.  Here  we  have  forty  units  which,  at 
five  shillings  apiece,  represent  a  money  value  of  ten 
pounds  in  all.  And  now  let  us  suppose  that  ten  women, 
representing  the  nation,  each  with  a  pound  in  her  pocket, 
which  ten  pounds  represent  the  national  income  of  the 
year,  enter  the  shop  for  the  purpose  of  converting  this 
money-income  into  real  income  or  goods.  Each  begins 
with  converting  five  shillings  of  her  pound  into  bread. 
She  then  converts  three  similar  sums  respectively  into  a 
length  of  green  silk  ribbon,  a  box  of  chocolates,  and  a 
copy  of  the  works  of  Shakespeare.  When  these  transac- 
tions have  been  accomplished,  the  conversion  of  money 
into  real  income  will  be  complete ;  and  the  two  will 
coincide  in  the  very  practical  sense  that  every  one  of 
these  women  will  get,  in  return  for  every  five  shillings 


REAL   INCOME   AND   SHOPPING    339 

Ne?ds  aL'l^sfe"^'  "^"'^  ™'°'^*^'  ^'^"^"y  *°  her  own 

cn?!!''^  fu    •'^"^  *'^^"  ^^^  <=ase  in  the  particular  vear 
supposed  by  us.     But  now  let  us  vary  the  supDosit^on 

r^pea"t  tCT  *^'*  *'" /^^"  ^^*-  ^»  these  SS 
[hfltf.!  ^^'  ?"^  ^'°°^  excepted.     Let  us  suppose 

that  four  groups  of  precisely  similar  goods  are  a t  th^ 
same  counter  offered  at  the  same  oldSes  and  that 
the  same  ten  women  with  the  same  sums  of  money  in 
lerHnP''.?"''  '"*"^*h"  ^'^^P  ^^'  ^^e  purpose  «?  con" 
hZTJ  '"  ™°"'y,  '"?™^«  '"t°  '^^1  in«>mes  as  before  • 
tt  M  "«^^"PP«se.f"rther  that  their  Tastes,  though  not 
their  Needs,  have  in  the  interval  changed.     The  won?en 

7hatYsfoZ\t'u  ^'3^  ^^y'"«  "P  ^»  the  necessS!!! 
win  .till  rr  the.bread.  Money  income  and  real  income 
will  still  so  far  coincide ;  but  as  soon  as  they  turn  to  the 
superfluities  the  sort  of  thing  which  will  happen  wUl  be 
this.  On  asking  for  ribbons,  they  will  say,  "What  we 
want  are  blue,  or  red,  or  rose  de  Barri,  of  orange^''  and 
since  none  but  green  are  to  be  had,  they  will  turn  Iwav 
jn  disdain  from  them.  When  the;  come  to  the  cC 
lates,  they  will  treat  them  in  the  same  way,  declaring 
their  palates  to  be  so  delicate  that  any  sweetmeat  but 
sugared  violets  nauseates  them.  When  tTey  come  to 
the  works  of  Shakespeare,  they  will  say,   "  Wh^t  we 

SJ'  ^^''"-     ^.^  ^""'^  "°"^  °^  "«  ha/e  a  volume^l 

fIS.!jP''f  ^  '  •n*'''''  f  *  «'^*-"     E^'^h  of  these  women 
accordingly  will   go   home   with   her   bread,   and   with 

nothing  else  but  fifteen  useless  shillings-useless  for  the 
sunple  reason  that  nothing  she  wants  can  be  anyhow  got 
f  if  If  "^'^  -T  *hem.  Money  income,  and  the  prifes 
of  all  the  articles  offered,  will  be  just  the  same  asXy 
were  ten  years  ago ;  but  the  real  income  of  these  ten 
women  as  a  whole  will  have  sunk  in  the  proportion  o° 
SlC"^'  to  fifty  shillings,  and  the  real  income  o  each 
wiH  have  sunk  m  the  proportion  of  twenty  shillings  to 

Now,  should  such  a  situation  as  this  arise  in  actual 

1  ^Ufl,?/'^  ""^l^u  °^  *he  producers  of  these  useless 
superfluities  would  be  to  see  that  such  a  situation  never 
arose  again.  If  we  take  the  producers  to  be  represented 
by  one  man— a  "universal  provider  "—who  is  the  oil- 


/ 


340     LIMITS   OF   PURE  DEMOCRACY 

garchic  head  of  a  single  manufacturing  business,  he 
would  set  himself  with  the  utmost  vigilance  to  discover 
from  moment  to  moment  what  the  changing  and  diversi- 
Hed  tastes  of  the  purchasing  public  are.  It  is  true  that 
before  a  taste  developed  itself  for  any  particular  super- 
fluity— a  new  kind  of  wall-paper,  a  new  ribbon,  a  new 
sweetmeat,  or  a  new  anything — he  might  have  to  produce 
samples  of  each  article  first,  so  as  to  judge  of  the  number 
of  persons  to  whose  Taste  each  article  will  appeal ;  but 
it  will  depend  on  these  persons  themselves  whether,  or 
amongst  what  number  of  them,  a  taste  for  this  article  or 
that  is  really  elicited  or  no.  Thus,  whilst  the  actual 
process  of  producing  the  income  of  any  rich  nation, 
such  an  income  consisting  mainly  of  superfluities,  is  one 
in  which  the  democratic  principle  is  subservient  to  the 
oligarchic,  the  process  of  determining  from  year  to  year 
what  the  actual  substance  of  this  income  shall  be  is  one 
in  which  the  oligarchic  principle  is  essentially  subservient 
to  the  democratic ;  and  the  extent  to  which  democracy, 
in  this  final  stage  of  industrial  process,  is  supreme,  can 
be  best  appreciated  by  re-considering  the  necessary 
limitations  to  which  it  is  subject  when  applied  to 
political  questions  other  than  such  as  are  primitively 
and  crudely  simple. 

Even  thinkers  like  Mill  and  Rousseau  admit  that  there 
is  one  obvious  reason  why,  in  any  complex  State,  com- 
plete political  democracy,  or  government  in  accordance 
with  the  will  of  each,  is  impossible.  From  their  point 
of  view  this  does  not  consist  in  the  fact,  which  has  been 
elucidated  in  the  present  work,  that  masses  of  average 
men,  unless  they  are  guided  by  the  few,  have  as  to  com- 
plex questions  no  common  will  at  all.  It  consists  in 
the  fact  that  of  any  large  population  the  judgments  of 
one  section,  however  completely  they  may  be  unified, 
are  always  likely  or  liable  to  differ  from  those  of  the 
remainder,  so  that  government  by  democracy  must 
always  mean  in  practice,  not  government  by  all,  but 
government  by  the  larger  number,  even  though,  as  may 
any  day  happen,  the  larger  exceeds  the  less  by  a  single 
voter  only,  and  nearly  half  the  population  be  governed 
not  by  its  will  but  against  it.  If  this  argument  be 
translated  in  terms  of  the  foregoing  illustrations — if  we 


CUSTOMERS   AS   VOTERS  341 

think  of  voters  as  customers,  and  of  political  measures 
relatmg  to  questions  fiscal,  electoral,  international,  and 
so  lorth,  as  commodities  which  the  government  has  to 
manufacture  and  sell,  any  government,  however  demo- 
cratic, wil    be  a  manufacturer  who,  of  all  the  measures 
which  might  be  devised  and  supplied  as  alternative  solu- 
tions of  any  one  of  such  questions  as  these,  can  supply 
his  customers  simultaneously  with  one,  and  with  one 
only.     If  a  hundred  of  his  customers  demand  of  him 
and  get.  Free  Trade,  he  cannot  simultaneously  supplv 
Protection  to  ninety-nine.     He   cannot  simultaneously 
DC  selhng  a  declaration  of  war  against  some   foreign 
Fower  to  one  man  and  a  treaty  of  peace  with  the  same 
Fower  to  another,  or  manhood  suffrage  at  one  counter, 
and  bi-sexual  suffrage  at  the  next.    In  short,  any  number 
of  customers  which  is  less  than  half  the  whole  will  have 
.  *^  PV*  "P  with  measures  which  they  one  and  all  detest, 
or  will  rather  have  to  swallow  them  as  though  thev  were 
so  much  medicine. 

But   when   we  turn   from   democracy   as   applied   to 
political  government  to  democracy  as  determining  the 
composition  of  the  real  national  income,  all  these  diffi- 
culties disappear.     If  forty  women  are  asking  for  blue 
ribbons  at  a  draper's,  and  three  little  groups  of  twentv 
are  asking  respectively  for  yellow,  green  or  magenta, 
each  woman    let  her  tastes  be  what  they  may,  can  be 
satisfied  in  the  same  five  minutes.     That  is  to  say,  the 
units  of  a  nation,  as  considered  in  the  act  of  converting 
Its  money  income,   or  its  potential   income,   into  real 
income  for  the  purpose  of  direct  enjoyment,  is  a  demo- 
cracy m  two  senses  :  firstly  in  the  sense  that,  as  a  court 
of  hnal  power,  it  imposes  its  orders  collectively  on  the 
entire  oligarchy  of  production ;  and  secondly  in  the  sense 
that  each  of  its  units  individually  is,  for  this  particular 
purpose,  a  unit  of  equal  influence,  obtaining  goods  which 
correspond  to  his  or  to  her  own  will,  but  not  influencing 
or  being  mfluenced  by  the  wills  of  any  other  persons. 

Ihis  fact  that  each  money  income,  except  in  so  far  as 
It  consists  of  a  few  absolute  necessaries,  consists  of  goods 
selected  from  an  indefinite  number  of  alternative  super- 
fluities, means  a  great  deal  more  than  at  first  sight  may 
appear.     It  means  that  out  of  a  multitude  of  incomes—- 


•■'I 
11 


342     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

such,  for  example,  as  a  fixed  minimum  wage,  which  are 
as  money  mcomes  of  exactly  the  same  amount— no  two, 
when  converted  into  real  income,  will  be  the  same.  As 
representmg  m  a  material  sense  the  conditions  of  social 
mtercourse,  they  will  within  wide  limits  be  more  ample 
or  less  ample— will,  according  to  any  reasonable  standard, 
represent  plenty  or  poverty— according  to  the  character 
of  each  individual  recipient. 

Vivid  illustrations  of  this  fact  were  given  incidentally 
by  several  English  journalists  who,  during  the  course  of 
certain  coal-stnkes  in  the  year  1916,  were  deputed  to 
visit  various  colliery  districts  with  a  view  to  ascertaining 
the  causes  of  "industrial  unrest  "  amongst  the  miners. 
Of  these  districts  a  feature  which  attracted  the  attention 
of  all  the  inquirers  equally  was  the  curious  difference,  in 
the  way  of  aspect,  upkeep  and  furniture,  between  the 
houses  of  men  or  families  known  to  be  earning  sub- 
stantially the  same  wages.  Of  the  numerous  cases  cited 
the  following  will  suffice  as  types.  One  of  these  homes 
was  on  one  occasion  the  scene  of  such  absolute  destitu- 
tion that  the  mother  of  the  family  had  appealed  to  an 
opulent  lady  in  the  neighbourhood  for  a  few  shillings 
to  buy  bread  for  herself  and  her  starving  children.  The 
cause  of  the  destitution  was  this.  The  husband— a  man 
who  had  been  earning  seventy  shillings  a  week— had 
converted  a  quarter  of  his  money  income  into  a  high- 
power  motor-bicycle,  his  first  exploit  on  which  had  been 
to  run  into  a  cart,  injure  the  horse  and  driver,  wreck  the 
bicycle,  and  kill  himself  into  the  bargain.  His  family 
might  have  lived  for  several  months  in  plenty  on  an 
income  which,  by  his  own  acts,  he  had  converted  into 
a  broken  toy.  Another  house,  incredibly  bare  and  dirty, 
was  the  home  of  a  man  and  his  two  sons.  Their  joint 
money-income  exceeded  three  hundred  pounds  a  year. 

Four-fifths  of  their  real  income  consisted  of  port  wine 

the  strongest  and  most  expensive  they  could  get.  Of 
this  fluid,  between  every  Saturday  morning  and  every 
Sunday  night,  they  managed  to  consume  eighteen  bottles 
amongst  them,  with  nothing  to  show  for  it  on  Monday 
but  the  headaches  it  had  left  behind.  A  third  house, 
which,  though  much  less  squalid  than  this,  was  in  no 
way  superior  to  that  of  an  agricultural  labourer,  was  the 


INCOMES   VARIED  BY  USE        343 

home  of  a  family  whose  money-income  was  larger  stUl. 
Of  what,  then  did  the  bulk  of  its  real  income  consist  ? 
1^  rom  a  very  dingy  ceiling  much  of  it  hung  in  the  form 
of  expensive  hams.  Part  of  it,  on  a  broken  dish,  took 
the  form  of  an  incredibly  huge  beefsteak.  A  part  of  it, 
yet  more  striking,  was  a  pile  of  hot-house  peaches,  at 
two  shillings  apiece,  on  the  middle  of  a  bare  deal  table, 
^rom  a  slatternly  fourth  house,  which  seemed  to  be  in 
clanger  of  collapsing,  a  large  real  income  emerged  on  the 
person  of  a  dazzling  female— an  income  consisting  of 
silken  skirts  and  stockings,  laces,  high-heeled  shoes,  a 
sprinkling  of  promiscuous  jewellery,  and  a  hat  of 
^^/ ul*^  plumage  surmounting  a  powdered  face.  At 
a  tifth  house,  not  far  distant  and  not  unlike  in  structure, 
the  inquirer  was  greeted  on  a  scrupulously  whitened 
doorstep  by  a  woman  who  looked  the  embodiment  of 
everything  clean  and  healthy.  The  glow  of  her  hearth 
withm  was  reflected  on  cheerful  walls,  on  her  dresser 
Tui  ^*s  spotless  plates,  and  on  dustless  chairs  and 
tables.     Beyond  the  general  living-room  the  housewife 

displayed  to  her  visitor  an  inner  world  of  wonders of 

carpets  and  sofas,  of  ornaments  under  glass  shades,  a 
gramophone,  a  piano,  and  a  number  of  memorial  cards 
on  which  family  affection  had  lavished  the  costliest  and 
most  appropriate  frames.  Everything  exhaled  a  spirit, 
not  merely  of  content  and  comfort,  but  of  self-gratula- 
tion  also.  "I  think,"  said  the  woman,  "I  may  give 
myself  the  pleasure  of  boasting  that  there  is  not  a  floor 
in  this  house  off  which  you  might  not  eat  your  dinner." 
Now,  the  money-income  of  this  woman  and  her  family, 
with  their  spotless  house  and  their  crowd  of  simple 
comforts,  was  less  than  that  of  the  three  semi-destitute 
drunkards ;  but  who  would  not  say  that,  in  even  a  mere 
material  sense,  their  real  income  was  beyond  comparison 
greater?  A  family  with  a  money-income  of  only  £200, 
if  this  IS  converted  into  healthy  and  well-served  food, 
decent  clothes  and  a  house  replete  with  comfort,  is  in- 
comparably richer  than  a  family  whose  money-income 
IS  £300,  if  all  but  £50  of  it  is  converted  into  intoxicating 
drink,  which  is  swallowed  in  a  dirty  hovel  by  men  in 
rags  and  tatters,  and  which,  instead  of  inspiring  social 
intercourse,  kills  it. 


344    LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 

The  moral  of  this  fact,  and  of  these  illustrations  of  it, 
is  as  follows.  In  any  rich  modern  country,  let  a  definite 
sum  be  given — a  certain  minimum  wage — which  is  the 
standard  money-income  for  so  many  thousand  people, 
and  of  which,  by  every  recipient,  a  fifth  part  must  be 
realised  in  the  form  of  irreducible  necessaries,  whilst 
four-fifths  will  be  a  selection  from  a  multitude  of  alter- 
native superfluities.  Such  a  money-income  being  given, 
the  real  income  represented  by  it,  as  measured  by  the 
needs  of  a  reasonable  social  life,  will,  within  wide  limits, 
vary  according  to  the  character  of  the  individuals  by 
whom  this  selection  is  made.  A  thousand  money- 
incomes,  let  us  say  of  £200  a  year,  will  indeed  be  equal 
in  one  sense,  but  in  one  sense  only.  They  will  represent 
a  right  on  the  part  of  each  recipient  to  the  results  of  so 
much  technical  effort — the  directive  ability  of  the  few 
and  the  manual  labour  of  the  many ;  but  it  is  the  choice 
of  the  recipient  himself  which  determines  how,  in  his 
own  case,  these  forces  shall  be  employed — whether  the 
industrial  oligarchy  and  all  the  complex  apparatus, 
mechanical  and  human,  controlled  by  it,  shall  provide 
him  with  a  real  income  consisting  of  enough  alcoholic 
drink  or  too  much ;  with  a  clean  house  or  a  dirty  one ; 
with  a  comfortable  ingle-nook  or  with  peaches  out  of 
season  at  two  shillings  apiece — or  whether,  as  the  Vicar 
of  Wakefield  might  have  put  it,  it  shall  consist  of  a 
gross  of  green  spectacles,  or  a  horse  which  would  drag 
a  plough,  and  carry  his  daughters,  like  "ladies  of 
quality,"  to  church. 

Thus,  even  in  the  case  of  a  standard  minimum  wage, 
which  would,  if  fulfilling  the  conditions  here  described  as 
rational,  be  mainly  composed  of  superfluities  selected 
by  the  recipient  himself  from  an  indefinite  number  of 
alternatives,  the  recipient,  though  wanting  in  the  abili- 
ties by  which  the  money-amount  might  be  amplified, 
would,  within  wide  limits,  be  able  to  determine  its  real 
amount,  or  (if  we  prefer  the  expression)  to  determine  its 
kind  or  quality.  His  potential  income  is  largely  deter- 
mined by  the  forces  of  industrial  oligarchy.  His  actual 
income  is  determined  by  the  forces  of  democracy  ex- 
pressing themselves  in  his  own  person,  not  through  his 
economic  efficiency,  but  through  his  own  moral  tastes. 


V 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AND   CULTURE      345 

"  The  style  is  the  man,"  a  celebrated  critic  has  said  with 
regard  to  literature.  **The  real  income  is  the  man," 
may  be  said  with  equal  truth,  so  far  as  social  intercourse, 
and  all  that  social  intercourse  implies,  owe  their  qualities 
to  the  material  conditions  earned  by  him. 

But,  as  the  basis  of  human  welfare,  real  income,  or 
an  aggregate  of  material  goods,  does  not  stand  alone. 
In  recognising  real  income  as  measurable  in  terms  of 
quality,  we  are  appealing  to  some  assumed  standard 
which  is  not  in  itself  material.  It  is  to  be  found  in 
certain  qualities  of  the  mind,  the  disposition,  or  the 
spirit,  which  would  make  the  social  intercourse  of  some 
men  very  different  from  that  of  others,  even  though 
material  conditions  were  in  every  detail  identical.  A 
dinner  party  of  twenty  Hottentots  dressed  up  as  English- 
men, and  provided  by  an  English  vicar  with  his  cook  and 
his  vicarage  for  the  occasion,  would  differ  considerably, 
in  its  quality  as  an  exhibition  of  social  intercourse, 
from  a  dinner  party  given  next  day  by  the  vicar  himself 
to  twenty  weekly  communicants,  the  pick  of  his  own 
parishioners. 

On  what,  then,  in  the  case  of  civilised  men  and  women, 
will  the  moral  and  mental  quality  of  their  social  inter- 
course depend  ? 


CHAPTER   II 

THE   MENTAL   DATA   OF   CULTURE 

To  every  social  gathering,  whether  in  a  tavern,  a 
cottage,  a  palace  or  on  a  village  green,  to  every  private 
interview  between  friends  or  lovers,  each  man  or  woman 
brings  some  hoard  of  ideas,  judgments,  interests,  secret 
experiences,  or  some  outlook  on  life  generally,  these 
making  up  what  is  commonly  called  ''the  heart,"  out 
of  the  fulness  of  which  the  mouth  speaks.  These  ele- 
nients  are  innumerable,  but,  classified  broadly,  they  are 
divisible  into  three  groups  :  those  belonging  to  the  life 
of  knowledge  and  intellectual  reflection,  those  belonging 
to  the  life  of  emotional  or  aesthetic  appreciation,  and 
those  belonging  to  the  life  of  religion — the  word  "re- 
ligion "  being  taken  in  its  widest  sense,  so  as  to  include 
any  moral  idealisms  in  which  men  may  seek  refuge  as 
substitutes  for  definite  religious  creeds.  These  elements 
affect  not  only  the  process  of  social  intercourse  itself, 
but  also  the  tastes  and  the  acts  of  choice  which  deter- 
mine what,  in  the  form  of  real  income,  shall  be  the 
character  of  its  material  appliances.  With  regard,  then, 
to  these  elements  of  life  which  are  not  in  themselves 
material,  but  which  ultimately  determine  the  character 
of  those  activities  and  experiences  for  the  sake  of  which 
all  political  systems  and  industrial  systems  exist,  let  us 
consider  how  far,  and  in  what  sense,  each  of  these  is 
democratic,  or,  in  other  words,  is  determined  by  the  free 
use  of  the  faculties  of  each  average  unit,  and  how  far 
(if  at  all)  its  origin  is  oligarchic,  or  contingent  on  the 
influence  of  an  exceptional  few.  What  we  shall  find  is 
this,  that  just  as  in  any  wealthy  country,  the  bulk  of 
whose  wealth  consists  of  endless  alternative  superfluities, 
oligarchy  in  production  is  essential  to  selective  demo- 
cracy in  consumption,  so  the  action  of  oligarchy  is 
essential  to  the  inner  life  of  the  spirit,  but  essential  to 

346 


KNOWLEDGE,   ART,   RELIGION    347 

it  as  a  means  only,  this  inner  life  itself  being  determined 
by  the  democratic  principle  even  more  completely  than 
the  character  of  a  man's  real  income. 

Let  us  take  the  life  of  knowledge  and  intellectual 
reflection  first.  All  democratic  thinkers  who  aspire  to 
be  considered  seriously  acclaim  the  life  of  knowledge — 
of  knowledge  desired  for  its  own  sake — as  the  choicest 
birthright  of  humanity.  Knowledge,  as  thus  under- 
stood, is  mainly  of  three  kinds — historical,  philosophical 
and  scientific,  and  its  value  is  that  it  endows  men  with 
an  enlarged  vision  of  existence.  Now  this  is  not  a  kind 
of  knowledge  which  a  man  can  acquire  for  himself  from 
his  own  daily  experience,  or  from  watching  and  imitating 
things  that  are  done  by  others,  as  a  shrewd  boy  may 
acquire  judgment  of  character,  or  as  children  acquire 
the  powers  of  speech  and  walking.  It  must,  during  his 
earlier  years  at  all  events,  be  imparted  to  him  by 
teachers,  through  a  deliberate  process  of  education ;  and 
the  taught  are  the  many,  the  teachers  are  necessarily 
the  few.  It  is  true,  indeed,  that,  despite  this  fact,  educa- 
tion in  its  earlier  stages,  just  like  primitive  industry, 
may  be  fairly  described  as  democratic ;  for  although  the 
teachers  are  necessarily  a  small  minority,  the  simpler 
kinds  of  knowledge,  such  as  reading  and  writing,  may 
not  only  be  acquired  by  anybody,  but  might  also  be 
taught  by  anybody  who  made  it  his  trade  to  teach  them. 
This,  however,  ceases  to  be  true  as  the  scope  of  educa- 
tion widens,  partly  because  the  things  to  be  taught 
become  very  much  more  numerous,  and  peculiar  gifts  for 
assimilating  them  must  be  present  in  the  teacher  himself, 
and  partly  because  the  task  of  conveying  them  in  an 
intelligible  form  to  the  pupils  is  one  for  which  gifts  are 
requisite  of  a  kind  more  peculiar  still.  By  no  one,  as 
we  have  seen  already,  is  this  fact  insisted  on  with  greater 
vehemence  than  it  is  by  the  extremest  advocates  of 
democratic  education  themselves.  In  order,  then,  that 
the  masses  may  have  access  to  the  higher  life  of  know- 
ledge, there  must,  even  democrats  admit,  be  an  oligarchy 
of  professional  teachers. 

But  this  is  not  all.  The  professional  teachers,  how- 
ever considerable  their  abilities,  are  themselves  de- 
pendent on  an  oligarchy  higher  than  their  own — on  the 


' 


348     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

supreme  thinkers  and  the  supreme  discoverers— such  as 
if  '  Aristotle,  Columbus,  Bacon,  Galileo,  Darwin— 
whom  Nietszche  calls  "the  shining  suns  of  Humanity," 
and  without  whom  the  professional  teacher  would  still 
be  teachmg  the  geography  of  Homer,  the  astronomy  of 
the  Ptolemies,  and  the  ethnography  of  Martianus  Capella. 
But  the  principle  is  the  same  in  any  case.  The  intel- 
lectual elevation  of  the  many  is  contingent  on  the  activity 
ot  a  certain  superior  few. 

Of  those  elements  of  social  intercourse  which  belong 
to  the  life  of  emotional  or  aesthetic  appreciation,  the 
same  thing  is  true  in  a  no  less  obvious  way.  There 
are  elements  of  aesthetic  appreciation  even  in  the 
primitive  savage;  but  the  instruments  of  such  ap- 
preciation m  all  its  higher  forms  have  always  been  a 
small  company  of  great  individual  artists.  Any  pro- 
fessional teacher  may  interpret  art  to  his  pupils,  but 

Shake^Tare  ''^''   ^^''^'^''   ^''   '''^''   ^Vaguer   or 

f^^l^^rf  ^l^'^fP^^  ^^  social  intercourse  which  belong 
to  the  life  of  religion,  the  same  thing  is  true  likewise 
Ihere  are  few  races,  if  any,  no  matter  how  primitive,  in 
which  the  crude  elements  of  religion  are  not  diffused  and 
indigenous,  and  so  far  democratic;  but  even  amongst 
peoples  such  as  the  aboriginal  tribes  of  Australia,  any 
religion  which  binds  men  together  has  for  its  nucleus 
some  kind  of  oligarchic  priesthood,  by  whom  its  rites, 
rules  and  doctrmes  are  performed,  enforced  or  perpetu' 

^ni'^'^J^'^'lu^^l^  ^'^^^'  religions,   such'^as   the 

Buddhistic,  the  Christian  and  the  Islamite,  which  dif- 
ferentiate civilised  men  from  the  blood-stained  savages 
of  Dahomey,  each  is  inseparably  connected  with  the 
person  of  a  single  founder. 

Thus  in  each  of  the  three  lives-that  of  knowledge,  that 
of  aesthetic  appreciation  and  that  of  religion— on  which 
the  quality  of  social  intercourse  in  a  civilised  country 
depends,  the  activities  of  the  few  play  a  part  of  such 
supreme  importance  that  were  their  activities  absent  the 
mass  of  the  citizens,  whatever  their  material  wealth, 
would  be  unlettered,  superstitious  and  half-brutal  bar- 
barians, as  many  newly  enriched  men  on  the  outskirts 
of  civilisation  actually  are  to-day. 


THE   GREAT   MAN   IN   RELIGION    349 


This  is  one  side  of  the  case,  but  it  has  another  as  well. 

Considered  as  instruments  of  civilisation,  the  great 
men  in  the  spheres  of  knowledge,  art  and  religion  accom- 
plish nothing  by  what  they  accomplish  in  their  own 
persons.  The  historian,  the  man  of  science,  the  philo- 
sopher, might  have  all  history,  all  the  philosophies,  all 
the  sciences  in  his  head;  the  poet  or  the  artist  might 
produce  great  poems  or  pictures,  which  he  secretly  read 
or  contemplated  in  his  own  study  or  studio;  the  man 
of  spiritual  genius  might  spend  every  hour  of  his  life  in 
secret  union  with  God ;  but  these  distinguished  persons, 
if  they  kept  their  achievements  to  themselves,  would  be 
candles  hidden  under  bushels.  Mankind  at  large  would 
remain  in  unbroken  night.  What  they  do  accomplish, 
what  they  have  accomplished,  as  an  oligarchy,  is  to  be 
looked  for,  not  in  themselves,  but  in  the  effects  produced 
by  their  agency  on  the  natures  and  the  lives  of  others. 
The  man  of  knowledge  habitually  estimates  the  value  of 
his  own  discoveries  by  the  extent  to  which,  through 
books  or  through  oral  teaching,  he  is  able  to  make  multi- 
tudes comprehend  and  accept  them.  The  poet  and  the 
painter  regard  their  arts  as  successful  in  proportion  as, 
by  poem  or  picture,  their  own  visions  and  emotions, 
their  own  perceptions  of  beauty,  of  joy  or  sadness,  are 
awakened  in  the  hearts  of  others,  and  there  become  con- 
scious of  themselves.  But  it  is  in  the  life  of  religion  that 
the  relation  of  the  few  to  the  many  shows  its  nature  in 
this  respect  most  clearly. 

A  great  preacher,  with  an  intellect  and  a  zeal  like 
Paul's,  is,  let  us  say,  addressing  some  vast  congregation, 
which  comprises  men  of  all  sorts  and  conditions.  The 
preacher  is  an  exceptional  man,  or  crowds  would  not 
flock  to  listen  to  him;  but  his  one  aim  is  to  appeal 
equally  to  all — to  touch  some  part  of  the  inmost  nature 
of  each  which  the  wise  man  shares  with  the  fool,  the 
humblest  peasant  with  the  prince,  and  not  to  galvanise 
this  into  any  artificial  life,  but  merely  to  rouse  from  sleep 
something  which  is  alive  already.  Apart  from  what  the 
masses  bring  to  the  religious  teacher,  there  would  be  no 
practical  meaning  in  what  the  teacher  brings  to  the 
masses.  If  there  were  not  in  man  some  sense  of  distress 
which  the  Christian  religion  has  interpreted  as  a  sense 


350    LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

of  sin,  the  Chrisfian  religion  could  never  have  come  into 

i1!f  wi?^ Vu '• "?  °"^  '"^^^'^  ^"^«  been  able  to  conjecture 
wnat  the  Christian  message  meant.     The  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  m  that  case,  might  just  as  well  have  been  a  pious 
soliloquy.     The  stones  would  have  cried  out  in  answer 
to  It  sooner  than  human  beings.     Let  us  assume  that  the 
Uiristian  religion  was  revealed  by  God  Himself,  through 
the  manhood  of  Christ,  and  an  oligarchy  of  chosen  inter- 
preters; but  Christianity,  as  a  living  religion  for  man- 
Kind,  is  nothing  more  than  such  elements  of  the  divine 
message  as  the  masses  of  mankind  assimilate,  selecting 
tliem  democratically  in  accordance  with  their  own  free 
proclivities,   just   as   income   in   the   form   of  coloured 
ribbons  IS  real  income  only  in  so  far  as  their  several 
varieties  are  selected  and  worn  by  women,  as  becoming 
to  their  own  complexions. 

This  comparison  of  religion  to  shopping  may  perhaps 
by  some  persons  be  reprehended  as  unduly  flippant      It 
is  no  more  flippant  than  one  with  which  we  are  all 
familiar— the  comparison  of  the  Holy  Spirit  to  veast 
hidden  in  a  meal-barrel.     In  each  case— in  that  of  shop- 
ping and  that  of  vital  religious  belief-there  is  a  pve- 
sentation  by  the  few  to  the  many  of  things,  material  or 
spiritual,  which  the  many  could  not  have  presented  to 
themselves,  but  which,  when  once  presented  to  them  bv 
others— by  the  great  scientific  manufacturer  or  the  sreat 
religious  teacher-the  many,  according  to  their  several 
capacities    make  their  own  by  free  acts  of  assimilation, 
m  the  life  of  artistic  caste  and  emotional  refinement 
generally   the  process  is  essentially  the  same.     It  is  the 
same  m  the  life  of  knowledge.     In  the  most  rudimentary 
education  admmistered  to  young  children  in  anv  national 
school   there  are  elements  to-day  of  philosophies,  of  syn- 
thetic thought  and  of  discoveries  to  which,  if  it  had  not 
been  for  the  specially  gifted  few,  mankind  would  still 
be  strangers. 

1  I^^  ^'^^  non-material  life-processes— those  of  Know- 
ledge, Emotional  Refinement  and  Religion— have  their 
analogues  m  the  processes,  wholly  or  mainly  material, 
of  Industrial  Production,  Political  Government  and 
War.  But  the  part  played  by  the  oligarchic  principle, 
though  analogous,   is  not  the  same   in  all.     The  six 


THE   DEMOCRATIC   CLIMAX        351 

main  processes  in  question  are  divisible  into  two  kinds, 
one  of  which  we  may  call  the  subservient  processes, 
the  other  the  processes  of  fruition.  The  latter  consist 
of  those — namely,  the  intellectual,  the  aesthetic  and  the 
religious — which  determine  the  character  of  civilised 
social  intercourse.  The  former  consist  of  war,  govern- 
ment and  industry,  which,  except  in  so  far  as  they 
subserve  social  intercourse,  mean  nothing;  and  though 
the  principles  of  oligarchy  and  democracy  are  essential 
to  both  alike,  the  principle  of  oligarchy  is  in  the  sub- 
servient processes  predominant,  whilst  in  the  ultimate 
processes  of  fruition  it  loses  itself  in  its  own  results,  and 
gives  place  to  what,  in  its  essentials,  is  a  process  of  pure 
democracy.  The  religious  oligarch,  when  he  has  preached 
his  gospel  to  millions,  lives  in  the  democracy  of  his  con- 
verts. Similarly,  the  average  wage-worker  engaged  in 
the  manufacture  of  chemicals  is  subject  to  the  oligarchic 
employer  through  whose  intellect  labour  results  in  rib- 
bons of  a  hundred  colours ;  but  his  wife  knows,  as  nobody 
else  can  know,  which  of  these  colours  she  herself  prefers ; 
and  she,  with  a  democracy  of  similar  wives,  by  freely 
choosing  this  kind  of  ribbon  or  that,  gives  orders  to  the 
industrial  oligarch,  the  master  of  chemical  knowledge, 
which  determine  in  the  long  run  which  dyes  shall  be 
produced,  or  the  quantity  which  shall  be  produced  of 
each.  It  is,  in  short,  in  the  process  of  social  intercourse, 
whether  this  exhibits  itself  in  the  conversion,  by  indi- 
vidual character,  of  money  income  into  real  income,  or 
in  the  free  assimilation  of  moral  and  religious  teaching, 
that  the  true  and  only  field  of  democratic  freedom  and 
self-fruition  in  a  civilised  society  will  be  found ;  and  the 
fundamental  truth  as  to  the  relation  between  the  two 
principles,  the  democratic  and  the  oligarchic,  may  be 
summed  up  in  saying  that  only  through  oligarchy  does 
civilised  democracy  know  itself. 

But,  however  true  this  may  be,  one  thing  must  never 
be  forgotten.  From  the  point  of  view  of  the  great 
masses  of  mankind  the  principle  of  oligarchy  is  justified 
only  by  the  fact  that  through  its  action  an  ampler  field 
of  self-fruition  and  choice  is  offered  to  the  masses  them- 
selves, both  in  material  matters  and  non-material,  than 
is  possible  in  those  simple  societies  where  the  influence 


352     LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 

of  the  few  is  absent.     Whatever  the  few  may  add  to  the 
possible  things  of  civilisation,  the  many  must,  according 
to  their  several  talents,  share  them ;  and  amongst  the 
additions  which  the  many  will  thus  share  with  the  few, 
material  things  stand  practically,  if  not  logically,  first 
In  respect  of  these,  the  debt  of  the  few  to  the  many  is 
represented  primarily  by  a  just  minimum  wage,  of  which 
the  mam  attribute  must  be  that  it  shall,  as  explained 
already,    represent    conditions    unquestionably    ampler 
than  any  which  the  recipients  could  secure  by  their  own 
unaided  efforts.      In  what  the  average  workers  could 
secure  by  their  unaided  efforts  only,  and  without  sub- 
mission to  the  orders  of  any  minds  superior  to  their 

''l.\  Yu  -^^""^  }^^  standard  by  ultimate  reference  to 
which  their  conditions  under  a  system  of  wage-work  and 
industrial   oligarchy  must   be   measured;   and   if  these 
latter  conditions— the  conditions  represented  by  wages- 
are  adjusted  in  the  manner  here  set  forth  as  rational, 
and  are  taken  together  with  those  non-material  adjuncts 
which  have  been  here  set  forth  as  possible  and  rational 
likewise,  then  so  far  as  reason  has  any  effect  on  the 
emotions,  however  strongly  they  may  be  tinctured  with 
the  sentiment  of  democratic  freedom,  however  stronglv 
they  may  be  inflamed  with  desire  for  material  plentv 
such  conditions  are  calculated  to  elicit  the  emotion  of 
content.     If  they  fail  to  elicit  it,  the  failure  will  be  due 
not  to  reason,  but  to  some  other  affections  of  the  mind' 
which  have  here  been  already  glanced  at,  and  which 
shall  now,  with  the  aid  of  certain  fresh  illustrations    be 
re-examined.  ' 


CHAPTER   III 

THE   MOOD    OF   VAGUE   REBELLION 

Every  human  being,  whether  he  be  wise  or  foolish,  a 
moderate  man  or  an  extremist,  must,  consciously  or  sub- 
consciously, have  in  his  mind  some  vision  of  the  external 
conditions  and  opportunities  which  would  content  him, 
or  at  least  leave  him  nothing  to  grumble  at,  as  the  setting 
of  his  own  life-drama.  Further,  this  vision  of  circum- 
stances and  of  the  life-drama  to  which  they  are  sub- 
servient must  in  every  case  include  the  assumption, 
conscious  or  sub-conscious,  that  they  lie  within  the  limits 
of  the  possible.  If  a  man,  in  his  own  opinion,  is  endowed 
with  talents  which  distinguish  him  from  the  great  mass 
of  his  fellows,  these  circumstances,  in  the  way  of  income, 
of  position  or  otherwise,  will  not  be  confined  within  any 
fixable  limits.  They  may  represent  an  income  of  many 
thousands  or  tens  of  thousands  a  year.  But  if  he  does 
not  and  cannot  persuade  himself  that  his  talents  exceed 
the  average,  the  circumstances  or  income  which  would 
content  him  must  be  such  as  would  have  to  content  the 
majority  of  his  fellows  likewise ;  and  the  maximum  which 
IS  possible  at  any  given  time  for  multitudes  has  limits 
of  a  fixed  and  very  definite  kind.  In  any  case  the 
circumstances  which  would  bring  content  to  himself  must 
be  nrieasured  by,  if  they  do  not  coincide  with,  the  amplest 
minimum  which  would  have  to  suffice  for  most. 

The  case,  however,  of  men  who  are,  or  believe  them- 
selves to  be,  exceptional,  who  believe  great  prizes  in  the 
way  of  income  or  position  to  be  their  due,  and  are  willing 
to  make  their  lives  a  hazardous  adventure  in  quest  of 
them,  must,  with  its  successes  or  failures,  be  left  to 
settle  itself.  Their  private  satisfactions  or  disappoint- 
ments will  have,  as  subjective  phenomena,  no  more 
interest  of  a  general  kind  than  their  love-affairs.  The 
problem  of  how  to  secure  content  with  the  existing 
▲  ▲  363 


III 


\u 


354     LIMITS   OF  PURE   DEMOCRACY 

system,  social,  political  and  industrial,  relates  to  those 
(let  us  say  four-fifths  of  the  population)  whose  faculties 
fail  to  win  for  them,  or  to  give  them  any  promise  of 
winning,  conditions  and  positions  which,  even  when 
they  exceed  the  average,  and  are  ample  for  purposes 
of  comfort  and  a  rational  hfe,  not  only  fall  short  of 
riches,  but  are  lacking  in  the  outward  insignia  of  what 
many  people  call  mediocrity.  The  units  of  this  majority 
might,  as  has  been  said  already,  recognise  clearly,  though 
grudgingly,  as  a  mere  matter  of  reason,  that  their  lots, 
if  adjusted  in  the  manner  here  described,  were  the  best 
which  the  nature  of  things  makes  possible,  in  the  sense 
that  no  radical  revolution  could  alter  them  otherwise 
than  for  the  worse ;  but  reason,  as  matters  stand,  would 
fail  to  impose  complete  acquiescence  on  their  emotions. 
Their  emotions  would  be  still  rebellious.  Unrest  would 
still  survive  all  the  possible  appliances  of  rest. 

In  what  part  of  men's  nature,  then,  does  this  difficulty, 
as  matters  stand,  reside.?  It  resides  not  in  any  belief 
or  opinion  which  sane  reason  can  endorse,  or  which  any 
reasonable  man  would  venture  to  state  categorically 
either  to  himself  or  others.  It  resides  in  a  mood  or 
temper  which,  in  the  way  of  obstinate  though  but  half- 
recognised  implications,  retains  what  reason  has  alto- 
gether rejected;  and  we  shall  find,  when  they  are 
analysed,  that  all  these  implications  are  summed  up  in 
those  formulae  of  pure  democracy  with  an  examination 
of  which  the  present  work  began.  These  familiar 
formulae — such  as  "one  man  one  vote,"  or  "one  man 
one  unit  of  influence  in  virtue  of  his  manhood  alone  " — 
are,  it  was  there  shown,  applicable  with  substantial 
accuracy,  to  the  affairs  of  small,  simple,  isolated  and 
primitively  poor  communities ;  but,  as  applied  to  those 
of  the  great,  complex,  interconnected  and  opulent 
nations  of  to-day,  they  are  not  loose  ways  of  expressing 
what  is  substantially  true;  they  are  precise  ways  of 
expressing  what  is  essentially  false.  These  formulse 
are  correct  as  applied  to  primitively  simple  communities 
because  in  such  communities  both  industrial  conditions 
and  governmental  are  the  result  of  the  co-operation  of 
equals — of  human  faculties  reduced  to  their  lowest 
common   denominator.     They   are   false  as   applied  to 


DEMOCRACY    VERSUS  AUTHORITY    335 

complex  and  opulent  communities  because  in  such  com- 
munities both  industrial  conditions  and  governmental  are 
essentially  the  result  of  the  co-operation  of  unequals. 

Ihese  formulae  are  false,  not  because  they  assert  demo- 
cratic principle  but  because  they  deny,  or  suggest  a 
denial  of  the  oligarchic.  «s        « 

Of  the  insidious  action  of  the  Mood  which  holds  this 
lallacy  in  solution,  and  which  is  constantly  pitted  against 
the  reason  of  those  who  harbour  it,  a  most  remarkable 
Illustration  was  given  by  a  well-known  publicist,  who 
enjoys  a  deserved  reputation,  not  only  as  a  powerful 
writer,  but  in  many  ways  as  a  temperate  thinker  also. 
In  the  course  of  the  spring  of  the  year  1917,  with  refer- 
ence to  the  real  meaning  of  the  struggle  between  the 
Germanic  Powers  and  their  opponents,  he  declared  in  a 
journal  controlled  by  him  that  "the  struggle,  in  which 
almost  the  whole  of  the  world  is  locked,  is  a  struggle 
between  two  principles— between  the  principle  of  demo- 
cracy on  the  one  hand,  and  the  principle  of  authority 
on  the  other."     In  this  instinctive  substitution  of  the 
word      authority"  for  another  in  more  common  use- 
that  is  to  say    "autocracy,"  in  the  sense  of  military 
despotism,  we  have  a  startling  illustration  of  what  was, 
at  all  events,  the  momentary  triumph  of  mere  Mood  over 
reason.      It  was   a  triumph   which   will  justify  us   in 
amending  the  writer's  statement,  and  saying,  in  a  sense 
much  wider  and  deeper  than  his  own,  that  "  the  struggle 
in  which  almost  the  whole  of  the  world  is  locked  is  a 
struggle  between  the  irrational  mood  which  insists  on 
proc  aiming  the  supremacy  of  democracy  simple  and 
unalloyed,  and  the  sober  reason  which,  without  ignoring 
democracy,  proclaims  the  principle  of  oligarchy  as  its 
constant  and  necessary  counterpart."    Indeed  the  reality 
of  this  struggle  was  exhibited  on  that  very  occasion  by 
the  writer  himself;  for  the  same  series  of  Comments 
which  contained  his  implied  attack  on  "  authority  "  con- 
tained, in  an  adjacent  paragraph,  an  impassioned  demand 
for  Its  exercise— a  demand  that  one  entire  department  of 
British  activities  in  war-time  should  be  placed  under  the 
absolute  control  of  a  small  body  of  experts. 

If  the  fallacious  implications  latent  in  the  formula  of 
pure  democracy  can  so  overcloud  the  vision  and  so  vitiate 


l! 


!i 


356     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

the  mood  of  a  mind  naturally  sagacious,  we  shall  find 
little  to  wonder  at  in  the  domination,  not  always  active 
but  always  ready  to  become  so,  of  this  same  mood  over 
the  natural  common  sense  of  masses  unaccustomed  to 
synthetic  thinking.  It  has  been  pointed  out  already 
that,  under  the  modern  industrial  system,  the  wage- 
workers,  when  dealing  with  their  various  sectional  inter- 
ests, exhibit  themselves  generally  as  the  last  people  in 
the  world  to  believe  in  any  general  equality,  whether  of 
skill  or  payment ;  and  this  is  specially  true  of  those  whose 
skill  and  whose  wages  are  the  highest  (such,  for  example, 
as  the  metal-workers),  and  whose  unions  are  most  highly 
organised.  On  ordinary  occasions,  such  as  those  of  par- 
ticular wage  disputes,  each  section  is  preoccupied  with 
the  interests  of  its  own  members.  Exceptional  skill  is 
vigilantly  jealous  of  semi-skill.  It  demands  and  clings 
to  exceptional  rates  of  wages  with  as  much  tenacity  as 
any  employer  to  his  profits,  or  any  investor  to  his 
dividends ;  and  in  principle  the  representatives  of  excep- 
tional skill  are  right.  They  are  right  in  demanding  for 
it  the  full  excess  of  its  value  over  that  of  the  ordinary 
labour  of  which  all  human  beings  are  capable,  and  which 
is  all  that  large  multitudes  can,  or  are  required  to, 
exercise.  We  may  even  concede  that  they  are  right  in 
endeavouring  by  various  methods — by  limitation  of  ap- 
prenticeship or  otherwise — to  convert  its  competitive 
value  into  the  value  of  an  artificial  monopoly.  But 
whenever  any  question  arises  with  regard  to  more  general 
principles — to  principles  affecting  the  constitution  of  the 
industrial  system  as  a  whole — it  is  precisely  men  like 
these  who,  in  alliance  with  discontented  adventurers, 
mainly  of  middle-class  origin,  are  foremost  in  shouting 
the  formulae  of  democracy  pure  and  simple,  and  deluding 
others,  and  probably  deluding  themselves,  with  visions 
of  a  world  in  which  all  rewards  are  equal,  and  skill, 
semi-skill  and  no-skill  feast  at  a  common  table. 

The  condition  or  mood  of  mind  which  renders  such 
self-contradictions  possible  is  not  susceptible  of  any 
rational  explanation,  for  it  does  not  arise  from  reason. 
It  is  a  combination  of  the  demand  that  everybody,  in 
respect  both  of  income  and  of  influence — of  influence 
both  political  and  industrial — shall  have   at  least  an 


CURES   FOR  A  DISEASED   MOOD     357 

equal  chance  of  "getting  to  the  top  of  the  tree,"  with 
a  demand  that  the  tree  shall  have  no  top  at  all.  In 
particular,  so  far  as  the  leaders  of  discontent  are  con- 
cerned— namely,  the  most  successful  of  the  manual 
wage-workers  and  the  least  successful  of  the  middle  class 
— -it  is  a  demand  on  the  part  of  each  (as  Professor 
Michels  shows  by  his  quotations  from  the  Italian 
Syndicalist  Labriola)  that  his  own  position  shall  be 
superior  to  that  of  the  masses  of  other  people,  but  that 
the  position  of  no  minority  shall  be  in  any  way  superior 
to  his  own. 

How,  then,  shall  this  irrational  mood  be  rationalised 
— this  mood  which  demands,  and  at  the  same  time 
denies,  equality,  and  which,  so  long  as  it  lasts,  renders 
all  content  amongst  all  but  a  few  impossible  ?  It  can 
be  rationalised,  and  brought  into  accordance  with  fact, 
in  two  ways  only.  One  of  these  ways  is  that  of  per- 
sistent appeals  to  the  reason  which,  however  obscured, 
is  present  even  in  the  persons  themselves  whom  this 
mood  mainly  affects,  and  through  their  reason  to  their 
imagination.  The  other  way,  and  the  costlier  way,  is 
by  the  teachings  of  the  results  which  must  ensue  if  this 
irrational  mood  is  carried  to  its  logical  consequences. 

The  way  of  appeal  to  reason,  although  it  may  be  long 
and  tedious,  is  of  far  more  promise  than  at  first  sight 
may    appear;    for   reason   itself,    amongst   the   present 
apostles  of  discontent,  leads,  as  we  have  seen,  already 
to  the  very  conclusions  against  which  the  mood  of  dis- 
content protests.     Socialists,  indeed,  in  defending  this 
mood,  which  protests  against  inequalities  whereas  sober 
reason    asserts    them,    are    compelled    to    call    indirect 
reasoning,    or   reasoning   by   suggestion,    to   their   aid. 
Certain  of  their  logical  feats,  which  are  somewhat  of  this 
character,  have  been  reviewed  in  an  earlier  chapter — 
such,  for  example,  as  the  doctrines  that  all  men  are  born 
equal,  differences  of  efficiency  being  due  to  differences 
of  position  only,  or  that  all  forms  of  effort  are  equal 
which  in  any  way  whatever  are  necessary.     But  in  their 
direct  forms,  as  parts  of  a  formal  theory  of  economics, 
these  democratic  crudities  are  now  virtually  obsolete, 
and  have  been  superseded  by  two  ideas  or  philosophies, 
more  comprehensive  in  kind,  which  are  connected  with 


358     LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

pure  democracy  by  general  inference  rather  than  by 
direct  inculcation,  which  are  peculiarly  adapted  to  cap- 
tiyate  a  quasi-scientific  attention,  and  which  socialist 
thinkers  parade  with  all  the  airs  of  calm  scientific  pro- 
fundity. One  of  these  ideas  or  philosophies  expresses 
Itself  in  a  certain  conception  of  the  State ;  the  other 
expresses  itself  in  a  certain  interpretation  of  history. 
One  IS  derived  mainly  from  the  speculations  of  modern 
sociologists,  notably  of  Herbert  Spencer.  The  other  is 
a  resuscitation  of  the  historical,  as  distinct  from  the 
strictly  economic  and  discarded,  doctrines  of  Marx. 

In  all  socialist  thought  some  conception  is  implicit  of 
the  activities  of  the  State  as  contrasted  with  those  of  the 
individual.  Under  the  influence  of  what  passed  muster 
as  the  "scientific  "  theories  of  Marx,  such  a  conception 
became  precise  and  prominent ;  and  in  all  formal  socialist 
projects,  from  the  days  of  Marx  onwards,  the  State  has 
figured  as  a  number  of  public  officials  who,  as  overseers 
of  the  national  industry  and  trustees  of  the  national 
capital,  should  take  the  place  of  the  private  capitalists 
and  employers;  and,  however  democratic  the  means  to 
which  they  owed  their  power,  they  would  constitute  a 
class  distinct  from  the  great  mass  of  the  population. 
This  corception  of  the  State,  though  still  a  necessary 
element  of  socialist  thought  to-day,  has  been  gradually 
supplemented  by  another,  which  now  exists  side  by  side 
with  It,  and  according  to  which  the  State,  instead  of 
being  a  class  apart,  is  a  single  and  indivisible  body,  the 
Marxian  State  being  only  one  of  his  organs,  whilst  the 
units,  those  of  the  official  class  included,  are  but  so  many 
cells  of  one  and  the  same  organism.  In  a  State,  as  thus 
conceived,  each  cell  differs  from  the  rest,  as  a  minute 
particle  of  this  organ  or  of  that ;  but  all  subserve  equally 
the  corporate  hfe  of  the  whole;  and,  as  one  of  the  philc^- 
sophers  of  the  English  Labour  Party  puts  it,  except  in 
relation  to  "this  organic  oneness,"  no  cell  has  "an 
individual  end,  or  any  true  life  of  its  own." 

a  ^^r,7^.  ^^^^'  ^^  Bacon  would  have  called  them,  the 
idols  of  pure  democracy,  such  as  equality  of  function, 
sentimental  solidarity  and  so  forth,  reconstructed  out  of 
new  materials,  or  offered  to  observation  from  a  new 
point  of  view,  with  the  object  of  inculcating  by  sugges- 


STATES   AS   ORGANIC   UNITS       359 

tion,  and  perpetuating  in  the  form  of  a  mood,  the  very 
fallacies  which,  when  expressed  in  detail,  the  reason  and 
even  the  emotions  of  socialists  themselves  repudiate. 

In  the  first  place  it  may  be  observed  that,  in  represent- 
ing each  human  unit  as  a  cell  of  some  organic  body  or 
animal  to  whose  unitary  life  and  prosperity  all  cells  are 
equally  necessary,  socialists  are  provoking  a  comparison 
which  is  singularly  unfortunate  for  themselves.  The 
cells  of  a  physical  organism,  such  as  that  of  a  human 
being,  are  by  no  means  all  equally  essential  to  its  life, 
or  even  to  its  general  health.  A  man  may  lose  the  cells 
which  make  up  (let  us  say)  his  thumb  or  his  whiskers, 
and  be  otherwise  hale  and  hearty  till  he  dies  at  the  age 
of  ninety.  He  may  lose  the  cells  of  his  tonsils  or  caecus 
appendix,  and  be  all  the  better  for  losing  them ;  but  if 
certain  of  his  brain-cells  were  lost,  he  would  lose  reason 
or  memory.  Were  others  lost,  he  would  die.  The 
analogy  between  cells  and  citizens  breaks  down  under 
the  first  touch  of  analysis,  in  respect  at  least  of  the 
equal  it  arian  moral  which  democrats  seek  to  draw  from  it. 

This  matter  is,  however,  of  minor  importance  as 
compared  with  two  others,  the  first  of  which  is  as 
follows. 

One  of  the  main  demands  which  the  spirit  of  socialism, 
as  a  moral  principle,  makes  is,  as  we  have  seen  already, 
a  recognition  of  the  moral  value  of  the  individual  life  as 
such.  "It  demands,"  says  a  socialist  writer  in  an  out- 
burst of  solemn  emphasis,  "that  every  human  life, 
however  weak  and  externally  ineffectual,  shall  be  rever- 
enced and  treated  as  a  something  unspeakably  precious 
in  itself."  But  this  is  precisely  what  the  theory  of  the 
individual  as  nothing  more  than  a  cell  in  the  body  of  a 
State-animal,  whose  corporate  life  is  the  sole  true  life, 
denies.  To  regard  the  individual  as  a  cell  which  is 
valuable  only  according  to  its  effects  on  a  body  exterior 
to  itself,  is  merely  to  rehabilitate  the  mood,  rightly 
denounced  by  socialists,  which  has  caused  many  em- 
ployers to  regard  the  individual  labourer,  not  as  a  human 
being,  but  simply  as  so  much  labour,  his  sole  value  being 
what  his  labour  produces,  such  as  a  wall,  a  corkscrew, 
or  a  drain,  and  his  microscopic  humanity  being  an  ash 
of  negligible  refuse. 


"i..''.T"."3:! 


360    LIMITS   OF   PURE  DEMOCRACY 

But  the  modern  attempt  to  exhibit  pure  democracy 
as   hndmg  its   full   embodiment   in   the   unitary   social 
organism  is  vitiated  by  another  absurdity  which,  includ- 
ing this  as  a  consequence,  is  even  more  profound.     The 
analogy  between  a  State  and  a  single  living  organism 
has  been  set  forth  by  no  thinker  more  emphatically  than 
by  Herbert  Spencer,  or  with  greater  elaboration  of  detail. 
He  maintains  that  these  two  phenomena  are  not  merely 
analogous,  but  in  a  literal  sense  identical.     He  says,  for 
example,  that  in  a  complex  modern  society  the  nerves 
of  the  human  organism  (or,  as  he  calls  them,  the  "inter- 
nuncial  "  tissues)  reproduce  themselves  in  the  form  of 
telegraph  wires.     Indeed  to  many  of  his  followers,  who 
are  otherwise  in  substantial   agreement   with   him,   he 
appears,  when  he  argues  thus,  to  have  pushed  his  case 
too  far.     At  all  events,  the  identity  of  the  State  with 
a   unitary   animal    organism    is,    even   if   he    does   not 
exaggerate  it,  presented  by  Spencer  in  the  completest 
form  possible;  and  it  is  mainly  from  him  and  his  fol- 
lowers   that    the    modern    socialist    philosophy    of    the 
organic  State  is  derived.     But  Spencer,  having  exhausted 
his  ingenuity  in  illustrating  the  minute  likeness  of  a 
State  to  an  animal  organism,  at  once  goes  on  to  insist 
that,  even  if  they  are  identical  otherwise,  there  is  between 
the  two  one  insuperable  and  fundamental  difference.     A 
S^jciety  or  a  State,  he  says,  is  an  animal  which,  unlike 
all  others,  has  not,  and  never  can  have,  any  "common 
sensorium."    Its  collective  activities  may  be  unitary, 
but  it  has  no  unitary  consciousness.     Whatever  con- 
sciousness it  possesses  is  distributed  throughout  the  body 
m  millions  of  isolated  units,  and  only  as  conceived  and 
experienced  by  each  of  these  units  separately  can  the 
State  have  for  human  beings  any  object  or  any  meaning 
whatsoever.     The  individual  citizen  does  not  value  the 
State  directly  as  an  objective  fact,  or  on  account  of  what 
It  IS  for  others.     He  values  it  indirectly  and  derivatively 
because  other  men,  as  units,  reflect  themselves  in  his  own 
experience,  and  because  the  prosperity  of  other  men  in 
the  mass  is  connected  more  or  less  with  his  own.     The 
contention,  then,  that  each  man's  life  is  equally  valuable 
because  each  conduces  equally  to  the  life  of  the  same 
State   may   suggest   such    an   equality   by   a   trick   of 


STATES  NON-CONSCIOUS 


361 


ambiguous   language,   but   has   in  reality   no   meaning 
at  all.  ^ 

If,  however,  we  revert  to  the  fact,  which  was  empha- 
sised in  the  preceding  chapter,  that  the  fruition  of  life 
through   the   State   consists   of  the   intercourse   of  the 
individual  with  a  limited  circle  of  kindred,  friends  and 
companions,  the  comparison  of  the  State  to  an  actual 
human  organism  will  yield  us,  at  all  events,  one  instruc- 
tive analogy.     We  may  say  that,  on  a  rough  average, 
social   intercourse,   in  the   case   of  each   individual,   is 
limited  to  a  sub-community  of  perhaps  two  hundred 
persons.     Thus,  in  a  country  like  the  United  Kingdom 
these  sub-communities  would  be  not  far  short  in  number 
of  two  hundred  thousand ;  and  if  we  liken  the  population 
as  a  whole  to  a  single  national  organism,  we  may  liken 
each  sub-community,  not  to  a  simple,  but  to  a  large 
composite  cell,  having  within  it  a  social  life  of  its  own. 
Now  every  actual  organism,  such  as  a  human  being, 
begins  in  the  uterus  as  a  cell  compounded  of  two  ele- 
ments—the female  and  the  fertilising  male.     This,  multi- 
plied by  fission,  develops  into  an  adhesive  cluster,  each 
unit  of  which,  though  attached  to  all  its  neighbours, 
lives  for  a  time  a  life  which  is  exclusively  its  own,  like 
a   man   whose   house   is  next-door  to  that   of  a   total 
stranger.     A  moment  arrives,  however,  when  this  state 
of  things  changes.     The  separate  life  of  each  separate 
cell  survives,  but  signs  appear  of  some  one  life  common 
to  all  of  them  by  which  they  are  at  last  absorbed.     The 
unified  life  thenceforth  is  the  only  life  remaining;  and 
it  is  as  a  unitary  consciousness  that  the  embryo,  no 
longer  embryonic,  is  at  last  born  into  the  world.     If, 
then,  we  compare  a  State  to  an  animal  organism  which 
is  embryonic  and  not  yet  complete,  we  shall  find  between 
the  former  and  the  latter  a  real  resemblance  which, 
when  both  are  complete,  vanishes.     The  cells  of  social 
intercourse,  being  all  affected  by  conditions,  political 
and  industrial,  which  are  more  or  less  common  to  all  of 
them,  are  so  far  like  the  cells  of  the  embryo  in  one  of  its 
earlier  stages.     There  is  a  common  life  in  both  cases; 
there  is  a  common  consciousness  in  neither.     But  these 
multiple  units  of  consciousness  in  the  animal  organism 
disappear,  being  merged  in  one;  whereas  the  cells  of 


862    LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

social  intercourse,  so  far  as  conscious  experience  is  con- 
XJ"^^'  always  remain  separate.  The  development  in 
the  direction  of  unity  is  arrested-it  goes  no  farther; 

^I'.l^'^^f''''''^^/^'^  *^^"^^  *h^^^  c^"s  oi  intercourse 
are,  the  fruition  of  such  intercourse  exists  so  far  only 
as  It  IS  reflected  in  each  of  those  globules  of  individual 
consciousness  of  which  every  larger  cell  of  social  inter- 
course is  composed. 

rnS^t"  P^^P^s^S' then,  of  socialist  or  democratic  argu- 
ment  the  relation  of  the  State  to  an  organism  is  one,  not 
of  Identity  but  of  violent  and  fundamental  contrast ;  and 
the  socialist  attempt  to  suggest,  by  appeal  to  such  partial 
analogies  as  doubtless  exist  between  them,  that  the 
process  of  advanced  civilisation  is  due  to  the  co-operation 
of  equa  s  has  been  here  briefly  examined,  because  it  is 
a  signal  illustration  of  the  intellectual  bankruptcy  of 
tWtS^  'f'^  *""  inculcate  by  suggestion  ideas  which 
they  themselves  repudiate  when  translated  into  definite 
terms  either  of  action  or  direct  analysis. 

Of  this  intellectual  bankruptcy  an  illustration  no  less 
remarkable  is  the  socialist  attempt  to  suggest  the  same 
conclusion,    and   maintain   the   socialist   mood,    bv   an 
appeal  to  wliat  is  paraded  as  a  scientific  interpretation 
of  history.     Of  the  invocation  of  history  as  a  witness  to 
the  essentially  democratic  character  of  all  social  progress, 
and  to  the  fact  that  oligarchy  has  been  merely  a  dis^ 
astrous  accident,  the  protagonist,  as  has  been  said,  was 
Marx;  and,  amongst  the  more  thoughtful  socialists,  the 
historical   part   of  his  teaching  alone   survives   iniact. 
There  are,  mdeed,  for  all  thinkers,  the  elements  in  it 
of  a  fundamental   truth,   which   by   the   earlier  econo- 
mists  of  capitalism  was  altogether  neglected.     The  sub- 
stance of  this  teaching  is  as  follows.     The  history  of  all 
nations  depends  on  the  conditions  under  which  material 
wealth  IS  produced.     The  actual  agent  of  production  is 
always  manual  labour.     The  product  of  all  labourers  is 
practically  of  equal  value.     Thus  the  actual  producers 
are  always  a  pure  democracy ;  but  history  shows  that,  in 
one  way  or  another,  they  have  always  hitherto  been  sub- 
jected to  some  oligarchy,  which  appropriates  the  results 
of  production  but  plays  no  part  in  the  process.     The 
oligarchs  first  were  slave-owners,  they  then  were  feudal 


SOCIALISTS   AS   HISTORIANS       363 

superiors ;  the  feudal  superiors  have  been  superseded  by 
the  capitalist  employers  of  to-day ;  and  the  business  of 
history  is  to  trace  out  in  detail  how  one  of  these  oli- 
garchies gave  place  to  another,  whilst  the  actual  pro- 
ductive process,  in  respect  of  its  democratic  character, 
always  remained  the  same.  In  particular,  said  Marx, 
the  great  business  of  history  is  to  demonstrate  how, 
why,  and  when  the  modern  capitalist  system  followed 
and  supplanted  feudalism. 

What,  then,  he  asks,  have  been  the  historical  causes 
to  which  the  capitalist  system  of  the  modern  world  is 
due  ?  According  to  Marx,  these  must  be  sought  for  in 
England,  where  the  modern  capitalist  system  first  made 
its  appearance.  The  chief  of  these  were,  he  said,  the 
Wars  of  the  Roses,  which  caused  the  dissolution  of  many 
great  feudal  households ;  the  distribution  by  Henry  VIII 
of  vast  monastic  properties,  thereby  creating  a  virtually 
new  plutocracy;  and,  further,  a  growing  demand  for 
English  wool  in  Europe,  which  caused  an  immense 
conversion  of  arable  land  into  sheep-walks,  so  that 
countless  ploughmen  and  cultivators  were  turned  adrift 
on  the  world  to  look  for  some  new  employment.  Here, 
said  Marx,  we  have  the  beginnings  of  that  division  of 
society  into  a  landless  multitude  on  the  one  hand,  and 
a  small  group  of  plutocrats  enriched  by  accident  on 
the  other;  and  out  of  this  division,  which  began  in  the 
sixteenth  century,  that  system  of  capitalism  on  the  great 
scale  has  arisen,  which  reached  maturity  in  England 
three  centuries  later. 

Now  let  us  grant  that,  considered  as  an  isolated 
chapter  of  history,  this  account  of  the  genesis  of  modern 
capitalism  is  correct.  But  in  view  of  the  ultimate  facts, 
at  an  explanation  of  which  Marx  aimed  in  elaborating 
it,  its  scope  is  limited  in  a  way  which  renders  it  wholly 
valueless.  If  a  coroner's  jury  were  inquiring  into  the 
death  of  a  particular  man,  and  a  family  doctor  who  had 
known  him  all  his  life  were  able  to  show  that  it  was  due 
to  certain  causes  such  as  habits  of  excess,  or  some 
tropical  fever  which  had  so  undermined  his  constitution 
that  a  slight  chill  had  been  fatal  to  him  which  a  sound 
man  would  have  hardly  noticed,  the  doctor  would  have 
told  the  jury  all  that  they  wished  to  know.     He  would 


864     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

deltV^'^Jn^h'^  "^  ^'^*^'  ^"*  ^t  ^?"^^  ^^*  ^^^^  explained 
death.     In  the   same   way  the  historical   argument  of 

Marx  may  do  much  to  explain  the  rise  of  one  o5rchv 

m  particular,  but  it  does  nothing  to  explain  why  ol ^^ 

garchy,  m  one  form  or  another,  should  be  the  invadable 

concomitant   of   advancing   civilisations   gene  aUy     the 

off  litter '^^^  ^^^"^  ^-^y^--  ----^Ple 

ot  It  If  the  capitalist  oligarchy  of  England  were  a  fact 
which  stood  by  itself,  every  detail  of ^its  spIcTal  ante 

won! J  ,'!^%^^^*«  ^hich  led  to  the  death  of  one  man 
n  tinH  ""^ .'''''^Z'^^  ™P«^t  i^  only  one  man  died  ;  but, 

Lera  th  ''^'''*'  '"""^  ^I  '^^  '''^  ^^  oligarchies,  is 
general,  the  more  we  confine  ourselves  to  conditions 
which  are  peculiar  to  any  single  case,  the  more  do  we 

IZZ'^IV!"'  ^^^-^^*^  ^^^^^  -^  fundamentafand 

thf  W^h«t  ^™''!I  '^^'  ^^^  ^^^^^^  ^'^^  attention  to 
ifearchv  th;  "^"^V'^r^  "^r^y  ^^  a  manifestation  of 
oligarchy,   the  capitalism  of  modern  England  had  its 

analogues  there  and  everywhere  in  the  industrkl  systems 

wS    and  ^thT^'tl  ;*— ^^y'  ^1-ery  in  the  incfen 
world,  and  the  statutory  system  of  feudal  labour-dues 
m  the  mediaeval      Society,  under  each  of  these  systems 
culminated  m  the  persons  of  a  guiding  and  ruling  f^w 
Nevertheless,  with  this  fact  before  him  he  so  Sd  hTs 
mmd  on  the  differences  by  which  these  three  systems 
were  distmguished  from  one  another  that  he  faUed  To 
note  or  appreciate  the  significance  of  their  persistent 
ikeness;  and  his  failure  in  this  respect  was  SoS 
m  his  famous  summary,  to  which,  in  its  general  sense 
sociahsts  still  clmg    of  what  the  world-process  of  in! 
dustrial  evolution  has  been,   is,   and  in  the  future  ?s 
bound  to  be.     Just  as  the  slave-system  was  inevitably 
transformed    mto    feudalism,    and    just    as    feudalism 
was    inevitably    transformed    into    capitalism,    so!    hT 
said,    by   a   process   essentially   similar,   will   capitalist 
teatsm!  transformed  into  the  industrial  dercrty 

It  seems  never  to  have  occurred  to  him,  when  he 
prophesies  the  advent  of  this  final  stage,  how  completelv 
all  analogy  between  it  and  the  three  others  evaporates 


FALLACIOUS    HISICRY 


365 


his  whole  prediction  being  merely  one  vast  non  sequitur. 
When  stripped  of  its  accessories,  his  argument  comes  to 
this  ;  that,  because  in  all  civilisations  hitherto  the  prin- 
ciple of  oligarchy,  however  it  may  have  disappeared  in 
one  form,  has  always  reappeared  in  another,  we  have 
ample  evidence  for  concluding  that  it  will  in  the  future 
not  reappear  at  all.  If  the  modern  capitalist  system 
had  been  not  only  cradled  in  England,  but  if,  having 
there  matured  itself,  it  had  been  confined  to  England 
also,  the  Marxian  account  of  its  origin  in  insular  events 
which  developed  themselves  during  the  course  of  the 
sixteenth  century  might  pass  muster  as  plausible.  But 
this  same  system  has  subsequently  risen  into  life  de  novo 
in  countries  such  as  America,  between  whose  history  and 
that  of  England  there  is  otherwise  no  resemblance. 
What  has  the  evolution  of  a  wage-earning  class  in 
America  to  do  with  any  evolution  of  landless  men  in 
England  which  was  due  to  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  or  the 
growth  of  sheep-farms  in  certain  English  counties  at  the 
expense  of  tillage  four  hundred  years  ago?  What  has 
the  rise  of  an  enterprise  like  the  Standard  Oil  Trust  to 
do  with  any  private  fortunes  which  the  favour  of  Henry 
VIII  assigned  to  a  few  individuals  out  of  the  plunder 
of  the  English  monasteries?  If,  a  few  rich  men  being 
given,  the  existence  of  landless  masses  is  at  once 
necessary  and  sufficient  to  explain  the  rise  of  capital- 
ism, why  has  America  witnessed  the  rise  of  capitalism 
at  all  ?  For  nobody  in  America  need  have  wanted  a 
substantial  farm  who  had  the  energy  and  the  disposition 
to  till  it. 

The  more  closely  we  consider  what  the  history  of  the 
past  has  been,  the  more  clearly  does  the  imperfection 
of  the  historical  theory  of  Marx,  which  is  still  adopted 
by  democratic  thinkers,  reveal  itself.  From  age  to  age, 
in  this  region  or  that,  societies,  unknown  to  each  other, 
have  formed  themselves  out  of  human  units  which  have 
come  together  like  drifted  grains  of  sand.  They  have 
gradually  risen  into  civilised  States  or  nations,  eminent 
for  wealth  and  power,  for  learning  and  for  the  arts  of 
life.  They  have  risen,  flourished  and  declined,  and  out 
of  the  dust  of  their  dissolution  others  have  been  formed 
anew.    In  Phcenicia,  Crete,  Egypt,  Assyria,  Carthage, 


366     LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

?H!?f;-^°r''^  ^P*'"'  *°^  *h«  northern  swamps  of  the 
Adriatic  this  same  drama  has  been  enacted  -and  not 
only  m  places  such  as  these-not  in  the  Old  World  on"v 
It  was  enacting  itself  in  the  New  World  also"  as  the 
Spaniards  saw  to  their  astonishment  when  they  first  set 
eyes  on  men  who  till  then  had  been  as  strange  to  Europe 
as  the  mhabitants  of  another  planet:  and  wWv^r 
wealth   learning,  art  and  national  power  have  drvlToped 

„k1i    ^j^t)y'on    and    Chicago,    some    special    position 
wholly  disproportionate  to  their  number,   has  always 
been  present  in  the  persons  of  a  ruling  or  leading  few 
Every  individual  event  has  its  own  local  and,  wf  mrv 
say.  Its  accidental  setting;  but  when  an  event,  al^^ys 

JepeaH'seH  J*%«°%^«««°«?1  characteristic,  is  found  L 
repeat  itself  m  countries  whose  conditions  and  histories 
are  various  and  divergent  otherwise  in  every  imagbable 
way  ,t  obviously  cannot  be  due  to  any  one  sequfnce  of 
local  or  historical  accidents-especially  when  the  event 
IS  one  so  unlikely  on  the  face  of  it  as  the^Sver  e  posses- 

^uriLtv^Torrof^iTiit: ''''''-''''  ^--^  ^"^^^^ 

toSfoVLr^n^t^^^^^^^^^^ 

socialists  are  accustomed  to  direct  against  the  ^1^^^^^ 

in  general.     From  age  to  age,  it  is  said,  they  ffve lived 

*  seTzed  -  t^;  J  1  ''''^  """J*?  ^'^"'"^  *h^"^  ^^  having 
Affk  ^1  ^^^^T^ys  and  locomotives  of  England 
Another  declares  that  they  have  always  "sdzfd  on 
knowledge,"  and  robbed  the  masses  of  education  Now 
to  make  such  statements  as  these,  of  which  there  arl 
endless  variants,  is  like  saying  that  Marx  eLd  on  the 
ownership  of  his  own  works,  or  that  a  painter  stole  from 
the  masses  the  ownership  of  his  own  pictures.  If  suJh 
things  are  owned  by  comparatively  few  persons  the 
primary  reason  is  that  it  is  the  intellect  an7enterpS: 
of  the  few  which  has  caused  them  to  come  into  exist^ 
ence-locomotives,  books,  great  pictures,  all  the  higher 
kinds  of  knowledge,  and  so  forth:  ^ 

But  let  us  put  the  matter  on  a  broader  footing  than 
this.     Let  us  take,  for  example,  the  statements  that  the 


THE   POWER   OF   THE   FEW       367 

few  in  every  civilised  country  have  reduced  the  masses 
to  subjection,  and,  by  robbing  them  of  the  higher  know- 
ledge, have  made  their  subjection  permanent.     If  such 
statements  purport  to   be   even  rhetorically  true,   the 
kinds  of  question  which  they  at  once  provoke  are  as 
follows:    If  all  men  are  naturally  equal,   how  has  so 
prodigious  a  feat  as  the  constant  subjection  of  so  many 
thousands  of  men  been  brought  about  and  perpetuated 
by  puny  little  groups  of  ten  }     And,  even  if  rhetorically 
there  were  some  truth  in  the  statement  that  ten  men, 
masters  of  knowledge,  withheld  their  higher  knowledge 
from  the  thousand,  why,  if  all  men  are  equal,  do  the 
members   of   this   overwhelming   majority   not   acquire 
such  knowledge  for  themselves?     If  the  subjection  of 
the  many  by  the  few,  through  a  monopoly  of  knowledge 
or  otherwise,  were  an  event  which  had  occurred  once 
only,  or  only  on  very  rare  and  fortuitously-like  occasions, 
such  an  event  might  be  reasonably  ascribed  to  accident. 
But  since  it  is  an  event  which,  as  socialists  are  constantly 
declaring,  has  enacted  and  re-enacted  itself  everywhere 
in  all  the  civilisations  of  the  past,  however  remote  from 
one  another  in  circumstances,  time  and  place,  it  must 
obviously  have   been   due  to   some   fact   which   is  not 
accidental,  but  universal;  and  this  can  be  none  other 
than  the  fact  that  out  of  every  thousand,  or  every  million 
of  human  beings  a  small  minority  bring  with  them  into 
the  world  faculties  of  will,  intellect,  constructive  imagina- 
tion and  leadership  which  are,  in  their  various  ways, 
more  powerful  for  constructive  purposes  than  those  of 
ordinary  men. 

Of  such  exceptional  faculties  those  which  happen  to  be 
predominant  are  not  always  the  same.  They  have 
sometimes  been  mainly  military,  sometimes  political, 
sometimes  commercial  or  industrial,  sometimes  intel- 
lectual or  artistic.  In  large  and  highly  civilised  States 
the  faculties  which  distinguish  the  few,  and  which  give 
them  their  oligarchic  power,  comprise  all  these  varieties 
simultaneously,  so  that  the  national  oligarchy  is  several 
oligarchies  in  one.  But  in  every  case  the  principle  on 
which  progress  and  the  conservation  of  its  fruits  depend 
is  embodied  in  the  persons  of  a  few.  Whenever  any 
oligarchy  has  existed  for  any  length  of  time,  it  will,  as 


iii 


368    LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

an  active  body,  appear  to  be  larger  than  it  is,  and  the 
foundations  of  its  power  will  be  obscured,  because  the 
active  members  of  it,  owing  to  family  ties,  will  be  sur- 
rounded by  an  accretion  of  persons  who  belong  to  it  by 
accident  only.  But,  from  one  generation  to  another, 
these  adventitious  members  drop  off  and  disappear ;  and 
actual  oligarchic  power,  to  use  the  words  of  Mill,  "  always 
18  in,  or  is  always  passing  into  the  hands  of  men  "  whose 
faculties,  as  applied  to  some  practical  purpose,  are 
by  overt  experience  marked  out  as  superior  to  those  of 
the  general  mass. 

This   fact,   indeed,    is   constantly   admitted   even   by 
socialists,  though  by  childish  abuses  of  language  they 
endeavour  to  hide  its  consequences.     One  of  their  stock 
assertions  is  this,  that  the  few  in  all  ages  and  places  have 
acquired  exceptional  wealth  and  power  '*by  reason  of 
their  superior  cunning."     An  English  semi-socialist,  in- 
venting a  word  for  the  occasion,  has  said  that  their 
wealth  and  power  are  due  merely  to  a  superior  "pushful- 
ness."     If  anybody  likes  to  say  that  the  telephone,  the 
turbine  engine,  the  aeroplane,  and  progress  in  the  manu- 
facture of  chemicals  are  due  to  superior  "cunning,"  he 
is  free  to  do  so;  but  in  that  case  "cunning  "  is  merely 
another  word  for  genius.     If  anybody  likes  to  say  that 
the  few  have  achieved  such  results  merely  by  superior 
"pushfulness,"  he  is  free  to  do  so,  but  in  that  case 
"  pushfulness  "  is  merely  another  word  for  wholly  ex- 
ceptional energy.     Changes  in  words  effect  no  change  in 
things ;  and  even  socialists,  when  they  use  such  language, 
virtually  admit  the  fact,   which  cannot  be  ultimately 
suppressed,  that  oligarchy  represents  the  power  of  excep- 
tional energy  and  genius,  and  that,  though  these  may 
be  the  results  of  accident  in  respect  of  the  pre-natal 
processes  by  which  natural  superiorities  are  determined, 
they  are  not  accidents  in  respect  of  those  post-natal 
processes  which  make  up  the  history  of  nations  in  their 
progress  towards  civilisation  and  wealth  from  primitive 
poverty  and  barbarism. 

Thus  the  Marxian  theory  of  history,  the  one  object  of 
which  is  to  exhibit  the  oligarchic  principle  as  an  accident 
of  civilisation,  as  in  no  sense  a  necessary  cause  of  it,  and 
as  thus  susceptible  of  elimination  in  the  future  by  force 


ABSTRACTION  AND   ADDITION     369 

or  other  arbitrary  action,  the  general  wealth  of  nations 
being  totally  unaffected  by  the  change-this  theory  of 
history,  to  which  socialists  still  cling  as  a  means  of 
keeping,  by  suggestion,  the  socialist  mood  alive,  sup- 

Srible^    ''''^    ''^''^^    '^^'''^    ^^''''^    "^^^^^    progress 
If,  however,  the  connection  which  Marx  was  foremost 
in  establishing  between  historical   oligarchies  and  the 
democratic   element    in   production,    together   with   its 
social  consequences,  be  taken  for  what  it  is,  as  not  acci- 
dental but  essential,  the  Marxian  theory  otherwise  will 
conduct  us  to   a  vital   fact  which  socialists  use  it  to 
obscure,  and  which  other  and  clearer  thinkers  too  often 
fail  to  realise.     History  shows  us,  according  to  Marx  and 
his  followers,  that  in  all  stages  of  civilisation  the  fortunes 
of  the  few  have  been,  and  still  are,  due  to  a  process  of 
pure  plunder,  disguised  as  military  conquest,  or  as  legal 
systems  such  as  slavery,  which  ultimately  rest  on  non- 
industrial   force.     By   whatever  name   they   may  have 
been  called,   these   fortunes  have   always  consisted   of 
abstractions  accomplished  by  the  few  from  some  revenue 
due  wholly  to  the  efforts  of  the  many,  so  that,  as  the 
few  grow  richer,  the  many  grow  inevitably  poorer  in 
exactly  the  same  proportion.     Such,  according  to  Marx 
and  his  followers,  has  always  been  the  case  in  the  past ; 
and  under  the  modern  capitalist  system— so  these  per- 
sons proceed— this   immemorial  process  of  abstraction 
has,  owing  to  adventitious  circumstances,  reached,  or  is 
reaching,  its  climax. 

Now  in  this  version  of  history  a  process  is  depicted 
which  in  the  past  has  actually  taken  place,  and  which 
m  some  countries  and  businesses  may  actually  take  place 
to-day;  but,  under  the  modern  system,  it  is  so  far  from 
reaching  its  climax  that  it  has  given  way  to  another  of 
a  radically  opposite  character.  Largely,  though  by  no 
means  wholly,  under  the  slave-systems  of  the  ancient 
world,  production,  as  we  have  seen  already,  was  demo- 
cratic in  the  sense  that  its  technical  details  were  deter- 
mined by  the  slaves  themselves,  whilst  the  typical  oli- 
garch, who  held  such  details  in  disdain,  took  everything 
that  the  slaves  produced,  over  and  above  what  was 
necessary  for  their  own  consumption.     The  manorial  lord 

B  B 


i  I. 


Il)< 


370    LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

of  the  Middle  Ages  lived  on  the  product  of  men  whose 
feudal  dues  were  paid  to  him  by  a  democratic  cultivation 
of  his  lands — a  process  in  which,  personally,  he  played 
no  part  whatever.     Under  both  these  systems  the  per- 
sonal enrichment  of  the  few  resulted  mainly  from  an 
increase  in  the  number  of  persons  by  whose  independent 
efforts  this  or  that  rich  man  profited.     In  ancient  Rome, 
at  the  time  when  private  fortunes  were  greatest,  these, 
as  Friedlander  has  shown,  were  largely  derived  from  the 
plunder  of  conquered  provinces.     Many  great  fortunes 
in  Spain  were  once  derived  similarly  from  the  plunder 
of  South  America.     In  France,  under  the  old  regime, 
new  men  rose  into  prominence  whose  wealth  was  so  con- 
spicuous that  the  noblest  of  the  old  noblesse  did  whatever 
they  could  to  make  it  their  own  by  marriage.     These 
new  men  were  the  farmers  of  the  taxes.     They  produced 
nothing   themselves.      Their   wealth    was    made    up    of 
abstractions  pure  and  simple.     All  these  methods  of  per- 
sonal enrichment  were  alike  in  the  fact  that,  though  they 
may  have  resulted  in  the  increase  of  individual  fortunes, 
they  were  accompanied  by  no  increase  in  the  products 
which,  relatively  to  its  numbers,  were  available  for  dis- 
tribution amongst  the  population  taken  as  a  whole.     It 
is   in  relation  to  this  fact  that  the  modern  capitalist 
system — the  system  of  industrial  oligarchy  in  the  only 
true  sense  of  that  term— differs  in  such  a  degree  as  to 
constitute  a  difference  in  kind  from  the  systems  that  went 
before  it.     Wherever  that  system  has  become  mature 
and  dominant— more  particularly  in  the  United  King- 
dom, the  United  States  and  in  Germany— there  has  not 
only  been  a  multiplication  of  large  individual  fortunes, 
but  also  an  increase,  to  a  degree  never  before  paralleled, 
in  the  product  per  head  of  the  several  populations  gener- 
ally.    Hence,  since  the  increment  in  question  is  primarily 
due,  as  we  have  seen,  not  to  any  intensification  of  labour, 
or  to  any  new  faculties  acquired  by  labouring  hands,  but 
to  the  directive  knowledge  and  intellect  of  employers  of 
a  new  type,  the   large   individual   fortunes   which   are 
distinctive  of  the  modern  world  come  out  of  additions 
which  have  been  made  to  the  general  wealth  by  such 
men  themselves,  not  out  of  abstractions  from  any  general 
wealth  which  tlie  mass  of  the  population  produces  and 


THE   TARANTULA  371 

would  continue  to  produce  in  any  case.  It  does  not 
necessarily  follow  that,  this  increment  being  given  the 
masses  will  derive  from  it  any  benefit  whatsoever!  'The 
super-capable  few  might  conceivably  appropriate  the 
whole  of  It,  and  might  even  steal  part  of^  th^prodict 
of  the  masses  mto  the  bargain.     But,  unless  this  incre- 

ZTa  W??  "'"^  l""^  maintained  somehow,  the  masses 
could  look  forward  to  no  mcrement  at  all.  On  the  one 
hand,  then,  the  submission  of  the  many  to  the  few  is 

InH  .'i?''  lu^'^'^^L'^^  ''^^^^^^  '^^  production  possible, 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  unless  they  participate  in  it,  the 
many  will  have  no  motive  for  submitting. 

Hence,  as  has  here  been  shown,  the  foundation-stone 
of  social  stability    and  the  key  to  any  general  progress, 
is  a  participation  by  the  many  in  advantages  which  they 
could  not  themselves  produce.     If  this  result,  which  can 
be  reached  by  the  co-operation  of  unequals  only,  and 
which   aims   at   equalities   which   are   relative   but   not 
absolute,  is  achieved  in  the  manner  here  set  forth  as 
rational,  it  should  not  be  difficult  by  an  unremitting 
exposure  of  the  fallacies  (such  as  the  socialist  conception 
of  the  State  and  the  socialist  interpretation  of  historv) 
which  are  used  for  the  purpose  of  keeping  the  socialist 
mood  alive,  so  to  educate  the  masses  that  this  result  shall 
be  accepted  by  them  in  a  mood,  not  of  sullen  resignation, 
but  of  temperate  and  intelligent  acquiescence. 

The  root  of  the  difficulty  lies,  let  it  be  said  once  more, 
m  the  general  idea  suggested  by  the  formula  of  pure 
democracy— the  idea  that  the  life-process  of  rich  and 
civilised,  like  that  of  poor  and  primitive,  societies,  rests 
on   the  co-operation,   not  of  unequals,   but  of  equals, 
and  that  some  absolute  equality,  or  an  approach  to  it, 
is  consequently  the  general  condition  to  which  rational 
society  will  approximate.     This  idea  gives  rise  to  what 
may  be  called  the  disease  of  impossible  expectations, 
which  are  mischievous  in  proportion  as  they  are  vague. 
The  formula  which  conveys  it  is  a  sort  of  pocket  poison, 
those  who  admit  it  into  their  systems  being  affected  by 
It  as  by  the  bite  of  a  tarantula,  so  that  all  their  sober 
judgments,  all  their  natural  sagacities  are  not,  indeed, 
destroyed,  but  sunk  by  it  below  the  level  of  conscious- 
ness.    It  is  hard  to  believe  that  for  this  mood  of  un- 


372    LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

reason,  of  which  Zola  in  his  novel,  Germinal,  has  given 
a  vivid  description,  a  persistent  appeal  to  reason  will 
not  be  in  time  an  antidote ;  but  if  mere  education  fails 
to  effect  a  cure,  a  method  which  was  mentioned  at  the 
close  of  the  preceding  chapter  remains.  This  is  the 
teaching  of  experience  to  those  by  whom  reason  is 
neglected. 


CHAPTER    IV 


OBJECT  LESSONS   OF  TO-DAY 


Let  us  suppose  it  to  be  granted  by  all  clear  and  serious 
thinkers  that  the  higher  achievements  of  civilisation, 
whether  in  the  way  of  wealth  or  culture,  are  not,  indeed, 
the  work  of  the  superior  few  exclusively,  but  are  con- 
tingent on  the  activities  of  the  few  as  influencing  those, 
which  must  always  be  pre-assumed,  of  the  many.  But, 
even  if  this  be  granted,  the  question  still  remains  of  what 
the  basis  ultimately  is  on  which  the  influence  of  the  few 
over  the  activities  of  the  many  rests.  Now,  so  far  as 
mental,  moral  and  religious  civilisation  is  concerned,  the 
influence  of  the  few  depends  on  the  voluntary  assimila- 
tion by  the  many  of  what  the  few  teach.  It  depends  on 
what  is  called  influence  as  something  distinct  from  ex- 
ternal force  or  authority.  But  in  the  social  processes 
which  have  here  been  called  ''subservient  "—namely, 
political  government,  military  action,  and  industry— the 
power  of  the  few  must  necessarily  have  some  external 
force  at  the  back  of  it,  which  imparts  to  influence  the 
character  of  dictatorial  orders.  Hence  with  regard  to 
these  subservient  processes  there  arises  the  immemorial 
question  of  what  the  force  or  sanction  is  which  renders 
such  orders  operative. 

To  this  question  the  great  majority  of  thinkers,  in- 
cluding the  most  conservative— we  may  say,  indeed,  all 
thinkers  who  have' ceased  to  believe  in  the  divine  right 
of  kings — would  answer  that  the  force  in  question  resides 
ultimately  in  the  people.  Thus,  when  the  principle  of 
absolute  monarchy  still  held  undisputed  sway  in  Europe, 
a  school  of  Catholic  theologians,  who  had  no  thought  of 
overthrowing  it,  proclaimed  this  doctrine  as  axiomatic, 
and  asked,  with  supreme  self-confidence,  "If  the  force 
which  is  the  essence  of  authority  does  not  come  ulti- 
mately from  the  people,  from  what  possible  source  can 

373 


874    LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

it  come  ?  "  Now,  if  we  regard  this  argument  as  meaning 
that  monarchs  govern,  not  in  virtue  of  a  quasi-sacra- 
mental power  which  heaven  bestows  directly  on  the  heads 
of  particular  families,  but  that  they  govern  with  the 
divine  sanction  so  long,  and  only  so  long,  as  their  peoples 
are  thereby  benefited,  this  way  of  stating  the  case  may 
be  accepted  as  correct  and  rational.  But  if  it  be  taken 
in  the  more  general  sense  that  the  will  of  the  people, 
if  unanimous,  can,  by  mere  force  of  numbers,  determine 
government  in  whatever  manner  it  pleases,  and  that  a 
monarchy  or  an  oligarchy  in  itself,  as  distinct  from  the 
people,  has  no  power  at  all,  the  argument,  seemingly 
axiomatic,  expresses  a  pure  delusion. 

In  what,  then,  does  its  error  consist  ?  As  opposed  to 
the  physical  force  of  a  monarch,  or  even  of  an  oligarchy, 
the  physical  force  of  the  people  arrayed  in  their  millions 
IS  overwhelming.  It  may  seem,  therefore,  at  first  sight 
a  self-evident  truth  that  the  millions,  if  they  object  to 
any  order  issued  by  the  one  or  the  few,  can,  if  they  are 
substantially  unanimous,  issue  for  themselves  whatever 
orders  they  please,  and  compel  the  official  power,  whether 
a  king  or  otherwise,  to  execute  them.  Thus  it  is  con- 
stantly said  to-day,  not  by  socialists  only,  that  the  people 
are  sovereign  in  the  sense  that  their  power  has  ultimately 
no  limit  at  all.  How  and  why  is  this  supposed  power 
illusory  ?     How  does  the  illusion  arise  ? 

It  arises  for  the  following  reason,  that  persons  who 
argue  thus  have  in  their  minds  a  picture  of  the  people 
as  engaged  in  one  species  of  corporate  action  only 
—that  is  to  say,  in  action  the  object  of  which  is  to 
obstruct  or  to  destroy.  Now  if  we  limit  our  view  of  the 
power  of  unanimous  numbers  to  powers  of  this  negative 
kind,  it  is  quite  conceivable  that,  any  positive  govern- 
ment being  given,  the  people  could,  were  they  all  so 
nimded,  destroy  it.  But  a  nation  cannot  live  by  obstruc- 
tion or  destruction  only.  It  can  indulge  itself  in  these 
processes  for  not  more  than  brief  and  rarely  recurring 
moments.  Unless  it  is  to  die  of  anarchy,  cold  and 
famine,  its  normal  life-process  must  be  one  of  continuous 
production  and  construction ;  and  as  soon  as  any  nation 
returns  from  destructive  activities  to  constructive,  the 
unlimited  powers  which  are  claimed  for  the  mere  force 


THE  REAL  BASIS  OF  AUTHORITY    375 

of  numbers,  as  arrayed  against  authority  external  to 
themselves,  disappear.  The  first  thing  which  the  masses 
of  a  people  must  do,  when  they  are  hoarse  with  pro- 
claiming their  freedom  to  do  whatever  they  like,  is  to 
cringe  to  an  authority  which  enforces  on  them  the  con- 
tinuous production  of  food,  and  dictates  the  primary 
terms  on  which  alone  food  can  be  produced.  This 
authority  is  based  on  two  things,  against  which  a  million 
wills  are  as  powerless  as  the  will  of  one,  the  first  being 
the  needs  and  the  structure  of  the  human  body,  the 
second  being  the  constitution  of  Nature,  and  in  par- 
ticular of  the  earth's  surface.  The  primary  business 
which  is  thus  imposed  on  men,  and  from  which  there 
can  never  be  more  than  brief  intervals  of  cessation,  is 
that  of  following  the  plough  in  good  weather  or  bad,  or 
bending  over  the  spade  or  sickle.  No  popular  will  could 
abolish  the  business  of  agriculture,  or  radically  change 
its  character;  and  if  the  power  of  the  people  is  thus 
limited  in  respect  of  the  production  of  necessaries,  it  is 
limited  no  less  stringently,  though  in  part  for  a  different 
reason,  in  respect  of  the  production  of  superfluities.  In 
proportion  as  nations  experience  the  comforts  and 
luxuries  of  civilisation,  the  things — things  such  as  these — 
on  which  their  keenest  desires  are  concentrated,  are 
things  the  production  and  multiplication  of  which  are 
possible  only  through  the  action  of  a  knowledge  and 
intellect  which  achieves  an  effective  force  in  the  persons 
of  a  few  men  only ;  and  it  is  only  on  condition  that  the 
people  obey  these  few  that  such  superfluities  can  be 
either  produced  at  all,  or  produced  in  sufficient  volume 
to  satisfy  the  appetites  of  the  multitudes  who  are  all 
clamouring  for  a  share  of  them. 

Thus,  whatever  the  powers  may  be  by  which  masses 
of  human  beings  are  compelled  to  perform  productive 
work,  these  powers  are  not  primary,  but  derivative. 
So  far  as  the  production  of  necessaries  is  concerned, 
these  powers  represent  a  pressure  put  upon  men  by 
Nature — by  Nature  which,  with  various  degrees  of 
severity  according  to  soil  and  climate,  flogs  them  into 
labour  of  some  simple  and  orderly  sort,  as  the  sole  alter- 
native to  death.  So  far  as  the  production  of  superfluities 
is   concerned,   these   powers   represent   the   monopolist 


376    LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

possession  by  a  few  of  that  rare  directive  capacity, 
obedience  to  which  by  the  many  alone  renders  an  abun- 
dance of  such  superfluities  possible,  and  which  compels 
the  many,  as  the  price  of  obtaining  them,  to  obey.  The 
authority,  in  short,  of  industrial  oligarchy  has  its  basis 
m  the  simple  fact  that,  unless  the  many  submit  to  it, 
they  extinguish  every  chance  of  gaining  what  they  are 
determined  not  to  lose.  The  same  argument  applies  to 
political  government  and  war.  The  power  of  govern- 
mental oligarchy,  whether  in  war  or  peace,  has  its  basis 
m  the  fact  that,  unless  the  many  submit  to  it,  even  the 
simplest  industries  are  paralysed,  the  higher  are  made 
impossible,  and  the  wealth,  the  welfare,  the  freedom,  the 
lives  of  all,  will  be  at  the  mercy  of  any  foreign  aggressor 
whose  armies,  vitalised  by  obedience,  put  them  to  flight, 
or  make  them  sane  by  enslaving  them. 

The  authority  of  the  few,  which  thus  has  its  real  basis 
in  the  permanent  needs  of  the  many,  differs  as  much 
from  the  power  imputed  to  the  people  in  virtue  of  their 
mere  overwhelming  numbers  as  it  differs  from  any  power 
which  has  been  ever  imputed  to  kings  as  derived  by  them 
from  a  quasi-sacrament  which  Heaven  administers  only 
to  the  heads  of  elect  families.  The  heads  of  governments 
may,  so  far  as  their  formal  character  in  concerned,  be 
Emperors,  Kings,  republican  Presidents,  or  little  groups 
of  Ministers ;  but  the  ultimate  source  of  their  power  as 
contrasted  with  the  power  of  the  many,  is  the  fact  that 
they  possess  amongst  them  certain  more  or  less  rare 
capacities,  the  exercise  of  which  by  somebody  is  essential 
to  the  many  themselves,  if  they  wish  in  the  first  place  to 
be  kept  alive,  m  the  second  place  to  be  kept  in  comfort, 
and  m  the  third  place  to  be  kept  secure  from  the  attacks 
of  other  nations,  whether  their  attacks  are  in  the  way 
of  competitive  industry  or  of  war. 

In  this  fact  lies  the  meaning  of  what  has  here  been 
said  already,  to  the  effect  that,  if  reason  should  prove 
insufficient  to  bring  home  a  certain  lesson  to  the  masses, 
there  is  another  schoolmaster  always  lying  in  wait  for 
them,  who  will  teach  it  to  them  with  rods  of  iron  this 
schoolmaster  being  experience.  The  lesson  to  be  taught 
IS  this,  that  every  civilisation,  in  respect  of  wealth 
government  and  self-defence,  is  due  to  the  co-operation 


THE   TEACHINGS   OF   RUSSIA      377 

of  unequals — of  the  few  who  lead  and  give  orders,  and 
of  the  many  who  follow  and  obey;  that  this  fact  reflects 
itself  in  the  general  configuration  of  society;  and  that 
in  proportion  as  tlie  masses  of  any  country  neglect  it, 
they  will,  as  a  whole  or  sporadically,  lose  what  they 
have  in  their  efforts  to  seize  more. 

Of  this  fact,  which  has  here  been  elucidated  in  detail, 
various  illustrations  have  been  given  in  the  body  of  the 
present  work.  It  is,  however,  now  possible,  owing  to  a 
series  of  unparalleled  circumstances,  to  supplement  these 
by  others  of  a  yet  more  mordant  kind.  The  present 
work  was  begun  some  months  before  any  immediate  war 
with  Germany  was  regarded  as  a  likely  event  by  most 
men,  or  by  anybody  as  an  event  that  was  inevitable. 
This  book  was,  in  substance,  virtually  complete  by  the 
end  of  the  year  1916.  Since  that  time  two  great  events 
have  happened,  which  have  given  the  world  a  surprise 
unequalled  in  history.  One  of  these  is  the  participation 
of  America  in  a  war  primarily  European.  The  other, 
more  sensational,  and  yet  more  widely  instructive,  is 
the  outbreak  of  the  Russian  Revolution,  and  certain  of 
its  outstanding  incidents.  As  detailed  corroborations  of 
the  arguments  which  follow  each  other  in  the  preceding 
pages,  the  author,  had  he  given  rein  to  invention,  could 
have  invented  none  more  striking.  Whatever  the  ulti- 
mate outcome  of  the  Russian  revolution  may  be,  the 
more  important  events  which  have  marked  its  opening 
will  remain  for  all  time  as  demonstrations  of  what  the 
principles  are  on  which  anything  in  the  nature  of  civilisa- 
tion rests,  and  of  the  ludicrous  ruin  which  ensues  when, 
or  for  as  long  as,  these  principles  are  violated.  It  has 
therefore  been  thought  well  to  substitute,  at  the  present 
juncture,  a  brief  reference  to  certain  of  the  events  in 
question  for  a  more  general  summary  of  the  arguments 
to  which  this  volume  has  been  devoted. 

On  the  outbreak  of  the  Russian  revolution  a  prominent 
London  journal,  with  very  judicious  promptitude, 
secured  as  its  Petrograd  correspondent  a  writer  who  was 
a  professed  socialist,  but  who  was  not  afraid  of  pro- 
claiming that  socialism,  as  a  practicable  system,  must 
find  its  basis  in  reason  and  common  sense  before  invoking 
the  impulses  of  mere  imagination  and  sentiment.     Such 


,i!' 


378    LIMITS  OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

being  the  case,  one  of  the  first  and  most  important  facts 
recorded  by  him  was,  as  has  been  mentioned  in  a  brief 
footnote  already,  that  revolution  in  Russia  had  converted 
itself  almost  immediately  into  what,  so  long  as  it  lasted, 
was  hopeless  ruin  for  everybody— that  is  to  say,  into 
"a  rebellion  against  all  controlling  persons,^^ 

Now  this  means,  when  put  into  plainer  language,  pre- 
cisely what  has  been  argued  in  the  course  of  the  present 
work.  It  means  that  in  any  great  country  pure  demo- 
cracy is  impossible,  or  that  democracy  is  impossible 
unless  the  principle  of  oligarchy  is  its  concomitant ;  and 
that  Russia  should  be  the  country  in  which,  on  the 
admission  of  even  a  candid  socialist,  such  a  conclusion 
has  been  first  demonstrated  by  a  vast  national  experi- 
ment, is  all  the  more  remarkable  for  the  following  broad 
reasons. 

Pure  democracy,  at  all  events  in  economic  production, 
is,  as  has  here  been  urged,  not  impossible  in  itself.  On 
the  contrary,  it  is  historically  the  system  of  primitive 
or  sub-primitive  poverty.  It  is  a  system  founded  on 
the  agriculture  of  self-directed  peasant  families.  Their 
labour  produces  little,  but  is  sufficient  for  their  bare 
support.  Now  of  all  great  countries,  civilised  or  in  con- 
tact with  civilisation,  Russia  is  the  one  in  which  the 
self-directed  agriculture  of  peasants  forms  incomparably 
the  largest  element ;  and  of  all  such  countries  it  is,  rela- 
tively to  its  population,  the  poorest.  According  to  the 
values  and  prices  preceding  the  war  and  the  revolution, 
an  equal  division  amongst  everybody  of  the  entire 
income  of  Russia  would  have  yielded  to  each  adult  less 
than  half  the  wages  of  the  poorest  English  labourer; 
and  of  a  total  population  of  180  millions,  the  self- 
directed  peasant  cultivators  represented  at  least  nine- 
tenths. ^  Since,  therefore,  a  peasant  population,  so  long 
as  it  continues  to  exist,  must  at  least  be  capable  of 
producing,  by  its  own  self-directed  efforts,  enough  to 

1  Webb's  analysis  (Dictionary  of  Statistics)  of  tbe  Bulletin  of  the 
United  States  Labour  Bureau,  V^^ashington,  1908.  The  agricultural 
workers  who  worked  for  wages  were  about  7  per  cent  of  the  cultivators 
taken  as  a  whole.  Factory  and  railway  workers,  miners,  dockers,  and 
industrialists  generally,  formed  only  about  one-thirtieth  of  the  entire 
employed  population. 


AGRICULTURAL  CHAOS 


879 


maintain  its  life  according  to  its  own  standards  of  living, 
it  might  seem  that  the  Russian  masses  were  so  far 
secure  in  a  merely  economic  sense  that  their  condition 
under  pure  democracy  could  not,  except  for  the  better, 
difier  from  what  it  was  already.  And  yet,  even  in 
Russia,  democracy  or  socialism,  as  a  rebellion  against 
"all  controlling  persons,"  has  caused  discord,  calamity 
and  death  even  amongst  the  peasants  themselves. 

Of  this  fact  the  socialist  correspondent,  to  whom 
reference  has  just  been  made,  gives  the  following 
illustrations.  Socialism,  he  says,  as  preached  to  the 
Russian  peasantry,  has  been  identified  both  by  the 
teachers  and  the  taught  with  desires  and  expecta- 
tions which  are  wholly  incapable  of  fulfilment,  and 
which,  moreover,  directly  contradict  themselves.  The 
peasants  have  been  taught  to  expect  an  era  of  in- 
definite enrichment  by  the  acquisition  of  new  lands — the 
property  of  individuals  or  of  the  State — which  are  to  be 
seized  by  them  at  their  own  discretion  under  a  system 
of  momentary  communism,  this  system  to  be  followed 
forthwith  by  a  system  of  private  ownership  which  will 
re-establish  in  their  own  favour  every  right  which  they 
are  themselves  violating.  Thus,  with  a  curiously  correct, 
and  yet  curiously  suicidal  logic,  the  first  ambition  of  each 
of  them  has  been  in  many  places  "  to  peg  out  "  for  him- 
self as  many  acres  as  he  could,  no  regard  being  had  to  his 
own  powers  of  tilling  them,  and  then  either  to  till  them 
by  hired  labour  or  sell  them — proceedings  which  have 
often  ended  in  battles  between  neighbours,  each  of  whom 
was  determined  that  the  best  plot  should  be  his  own. 
Thus  the  peasants  of  one  village,  says  the  writer  here 
referred  to,  "were  busy  in  distrilDuting  the  estate  of  a 
local  landowner,  when  a  free  fight  ensued  from  which 
hardly  a  man  in  the  neighbourhood  issued  without 
wounds,  and  in  which  fifteen  were  killed."  In  another 
case,  according  to  the  same  authority,  a  body  of  revolu- 
tionaries, having  seized  a  large  estate,  appointed  men 
to  work  it  for  them  "  at  three  or  four  times  the  usual 
wages.  They  began  with  paying  these  wages  out  of  the 
cash  discovered  in  the  estate  office.  When  this  fund  was 
exhausted,  they  continued  the  payments  in  question  by 
selling  the  trees  and  cattle;  and  when  this  source  of 


M 


380    LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

revenue  had  run  dry  likewise  (the  estate  being  no  longer 
capable  of  yielding  anything),  they  actually  applied  to 
the  expropriated  landlord  for  a  cheque  to  pay  the  wages 
of  men  now  employed  as  their  own  servants."  In  yet 
another  case  a  generous  proprietor  gave  the  wife  of  an 
absent  soldier  leave  to  take  grass  from  a  small  plot. 
Ihe  local  agrarian  council  suggested  that  he  should  do 
the  same  with  his  whole  property,  but  the  president 
mtervened  with  the  stipulation  that  the  peasants  should 
only  take  land  on  condition  that  they  worked  it  them- 
selves. A  peasant,  who  had  already  taken  a  large  slice, 
calculated  on  selling  many  loads  of  hay  to  the  govern- 
ment, and,  finding  himself  barred  from  exploiting  labour 
to  work  It,  gave  up  that  particular  slice,  and,  appropri- 
ating the  plot  given  to  the  soldier's  wife,  sold  the  hay 
which  the  poor  woman  had  raised  on  it. 

Incidents   such   as   these    illustrate,    not    merely   the 
economic  chaos  to  which  even  the  simplest  of  all  possible 
industries  may  be  reduced  by  a  practical  application  of 
the  principle  of  pure  democracy.     They  illustrate  also 
the  absence  from  the  natural  human  character  of  any- 
thing approaching  that  sentiment  of  "each  for  all,"  on 
the  supremacy  of  which  the  more  scientific  socialists  of 
to-day  have  been  driven  to  base  their  hopes  of  equal 
conditions  and  positions  as  the  result  of  efforts  admitted 
by  themselves  to  be  unequal.     In  accordance  with  what 
has  been  said  in  a  previous  chapter  as  to  average  men 
generally,  the  idea  of  equality  appeals  to  the  Russian 
peasant,   like   a  match   applied   to  tinder,   so  long  as 
equality  is  a  mere  vague  idea ;  but  it  does  not  appeal  to 
him  even  then  for  its  own  sake.     It  appeals  to  him  so 
long  as  It  IS  a  symbol  of  some  indefinite  change  which 
comprises,  as  one  of  its  incidents,  some  indefinite  advan- 
tage for  himself,  and  which,  when  its  consequences  are 
complete,  will  leave  him  in  the  possession  of  advantages 
greater  than  those  of  others.     Thus,  jealous  of  the  high 
money-wages  known  to  have  been  claimed  and  secured 
by    the    wage-earners    in    various    factories— munition 
works  m  particular— the  Russian   peasants  have  been 
actually  burying  loaves  sooner  than  supply  them  to  the 
government  for  the  benefit,  so  they  put  it,  "  of  those 
idle  fellows  in  Petrograd." 


INDUSTRIAL  CHAOS 


381 


The  factory  workers,  so  says  the  same  writer,  have 
outdone  the  peasants  by  follies  of  a  similar,  but  more 
elaborate,  kind.  As  mentioned  already  in  certain  brief 
footnotes,  they  have  demanded  that  the  heads  of  complex 
and  scientific  businesses  should  transfer  the  management 
to  committees  of  elected  workmen,  who  proved  so  in- 
capable of  grasping  the  most  rudimentary  facts  on  which 
a  scientific  or  any  other  business  depends,  that  they  sold, 
in  order  to  augment  their  immediate  wages,  whatever 
raw  materials  happened  to  be  stored  on  the  premises, 
and  thus  deprived  themselves  of  the  means  of  earning 
any  wages  whatever.  In  certain  cases  the  wage-earners 
have  demanded  that  the  employers,  under  pain  of 
death,  let  conditions  be  what  they  may,  should  keep 
their  businesses  going,  and  pay  whatever  wages  the 
wage-earners  happen  to  demand.  Thus,  the  writer  here 
quoted  mentions  a  group  of  eighteen  engineering  com- 
panies, the  gross  profits  of  which  were  less  than  eight 
million  pounds,  whilst  the  total  wages  demanded  came 
to  nearly  twenty-two  million.  But  even  this  demand 
was  modest  when  compared  with  another — a  demand  in 
one  business  for  wages  which  bore  to  the  total  value  of 
the  product  a  proportion  of  not  less  than  two  hundred 
to  fifteen. 

It  is  not  surprising  that,  in  view  of  facts  like  these, 
one  of  the  revolutionary  leaders  declared  that  ''Russia 
was  on  the  eve  of  a  financial  and  economic  crash  " ;  that 
"never  since  railways  began  has  transport  been  reduced 
to  such  disorder  and  anarchy  " ;  and  that,  unless  matters 
should  mend,  "  winter  would  find  the  country  in  the  grip 
of  a  colossal  famine." 

Similar  observations  have  again  and  again  been  made 
by  the  socialist  writer  here  quoted  himself,  and  by  pro- 
minent members  of  the  revolutionary  party  also,  with 
regard  to  the  collapse  of  all  civil  order,  and  to  local 
rebellions  (as  at  Cronstadt)  against  any  central  author- 
ity; whilst  all  these  events  have,  with  a  dramatic 
fatality,  culminated  in  one  which  needs  no  rhetoric  to 
emphasise  it — namely,  the  total  collapse  of  the  army 
wherever,  or  in  so  far  as,  principles  accepted  as  those 
of  pure  democracy  have  prevailed.  Well  may  the 
socialist  writer  here  quoted  say,   "It  is  the  irony  of 


1  ii 


382     LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

fate  that  the  most  sociaHstic  government  ever  formed 
should  find  its  greatest  dangers  in  these  nihihstic  (or 
purely  destructive)  activities;  and  that  unless  the 
Russian  government  can  quickly  destroy  them,  they  will 
quickly  destroy  government,  and  destroy  Russia  alone 
with  it."  ^ 

To  what  causes,  then,  in  the  opinion  of  this  candid 
critic,  are  these  fatal  results  ultimately  or  fundamentally 
attributable  ?     They  are,  he  says,  if  we  take  them  gener- 
ally, due  to  the  fact  that  "our  Russian  friends,"  as  he 
calls  them, "  have  found,  rather  late  in  life,  some  socialist 
lumber,  which  has  now  been  discarded  by  Western  demo- 
cratic nations,  and  imagine  that  they  have  discovered 
brand-new  scientific  truths,  never  used  before.     It  will 
be  useful,"  he  proceeds,   "to  shatter  their  flattering 
faith,  and  bring  them  out  of  the  clouds,  to  a  firmer 
earth,  and  to  contact  with  grim  realities."    And  of  what, 
then,  let  us  ask  once  more,  do  these  "  clouds  "  of  thought 
consist,  which  "Western  democratic  nations  have  dis- 
carded as  so  much  lumber"?     This  writer,   in  words 
which  have  been  quoted  already,  puts  the  matter  very 
succmctly  when  he  says  that  these  "clouds  "  consist  of 
the  fatal  idea  which  identifies  freedom  and  prosperity 
with  the  extirpation  or  elimination  of  "all  controllinff 
persons."  ^ 

Now  if  such  observations  made  by  a  professed  socialist 
are  taken  together  and  analysed,  it  will  be  found  that 
their  substance  coincides  in  a  very  remarkable  way  with 
the  arguments  which,  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of 
It,  have  been  elucidated  in  the  present  work,  the  coinci- 
dence amounting  in  some  cases  to  an  equivalence  even 
of  phrase.     For  example,  it  has  here  been  said  that  the 
practical  effect  of  the  formulae  of  pure  democracy  is  to 
popularise  a  mood  of  mind  which  may  be  best  described 
as   "a   disease   of  impossible   expectations."     Further, 
the  dementing  effect  of  these  formulae  have  been  here 
described    as    comparable   to   those    of   the    bite    of   a 
tarantula.     The  socialist  writer  whose  criticisms  we  have 
just  been  quoting,  declares  that  the  disastrous  first-fruits 
of  revolution  in  Russia  "are  the  results  of  the  general 
upheaval  of  an  immature  population,  ignorant  of  eco- 
nomics, and  vaguely  expectant  of  an  immediate  mil- 


III    nm  •  — ■ 


CALLS   FOR  DICTATORSHIP        383 


lenmum."  In  short,  the  general  mood  prevalent 
amongst  the  Russian  masses— for  he,  too,  recognises  the 
distinction  between  a  mood  and  precise  thought— was 
described  by  him  as  resembling  the  effects  of  the  bite 
of  a  mad  dog — in  other  words,  as  resembling,  not 
tarantulation,  but  "hydrophobia."  If  between  the 
mam  argument  elucidated  in  the  present  work  and  the 
arguments  of  a  professed  socialist  there  is,  as  to  certain 
fundamentals,  a  resemblance  so  close  as  this,  there  must 
be  certain  elements  of  agreement  between  the  principles 
of  the  saner  socialism  and  the  principles  of  scientific  as 
distinct  from  mere  party  conservatism. 

This  will  be  still  more  obvious  if  we  consider  how  the 
argument    of    the    writer    here    in    question    proceeds. 
Having  described  and  analysed  the  various  events  and 
causes   which   were   threatening  to   make   the   Russian 
revolution  hopeless,  he  proceeds  to  ask  by  what  possible 
means  a  situation  so  desperate  could  be  retrieved;  and 
he  answers  that,  in  his  own  opinion,  and  in  the  opinion 
of  all  Russians  who  had  not  lost  their  sanity,  the  cause 
of  democratic  revolution  could  be  saved  by  one  means 
only— this  means  being  a  dictatorship  entrusted  to  the 
proper  hands.     Further,  as  the  one  man  in  Russia,  whose 
strength  of  character  and  whose  principles  would  fit  him 
for  the  supreme  office,   he  did   not  hesitate  to  name 
M.  Kerensky ;  and  what  the  principles  were,  on  a  fearless 
vindication  of  which  the  success  of  democracy  in  Russia 
for  the  time  being  depended,  he  proclaimed  in  no  un- 
certain language.     We  can,  he  says,  best  grasp  them  by 
remembering   how    in   the    summer    of   the   year   1917 
M.  Kerensky  deliberately  ignored  the  assumed  authority 
of   the   so-called   Workmen's   and   Soldiers'   Delegates, 
when  he  ordered,  as  an  absolute  autocrat,  "the  begin- 
ning of  the  June  offensive  ";  how  he  threatened  death 
to  all  who  should,  by  disobeying  his  mandates,  prove 
themselves,  by  disobeying  him,  "traitors  to  the  red  flag 
of  revolution";   and  how  he  declared  that,   "for  the 
purpose  of  checking  military  retreat,  and  putting  an  end 
to  economic  disorder,"  he  would,  were  commands  in- 
sufficient, have  recourse  to  the  methods  of  "blood  and 
iron." 

Here,  indeed,  is  a  case  which  might,  to  the  mere  cynic. 


384    LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

well  suggest  the  question, "  Quis  tulerit  Gracchos  de  sedi- 
tione  querentes  ?  "  But  the  merely  cynical  mood  will,  in 
a  case  like  this,  not  carry  us  far.  When  men  who,  as 
dreamers  or  agitators,  have  been  clamouring  for  pure 
democracy,  find  themselves  transformed  by  action  into 
oligarchs  or  imperious  autocrats,  to  denounce  them  as 
renegades  is  not  only  an  unjust,  it  is  also  a  ludicrously 
shallow,  criticism.  If  blame  attaches  to  them  at  all, 
they  are  blamable,  not  because  they  have  renounced  their 
old  opinions,  but  because  they  ever  entertained  and 
promulgated  them.  The  act  of  renouncing  them  may  be 
an  act  of  the  highest  courage;  but  this  courage,  unfor- 
tunately, is  not  seldom  accompanied  by  what  may  fairly, 
though  regretfully,  be  called  a  certain  continuation  of 
cowardice.  Such  persons,  whilst  in  action  renouncing 
their  earlier  principles,  permit  themselves  to  pretend, 
by  a  gross  abuse  of  language,  that  these  principles  are 
still  their  own;  or  at  all  events  they  do  their  best  to 
hide  that  essential  difference  between  their  old  opinions 
and  their  new,  which  they  recognise  as  dividing  the  prin- 
ciples of  military  collapse,  civil  chaos  and  economic 
famine,  from  those  of  any  possible  civilisation,  of  any 
rational  freedom,  of  any  effective  industry,  or  secure 
material  welfare.  They  endeavour  to  hide  this  difference 
by  continued  appeals  to  what  they  call  "the  red  flag  of 
revolution  ";  though  by  every  constructive  act  they  are, 
happily  for  their  country,  violating  every  distinctive 
hope  with  which,  in  the  popular  mind,  the  "red  flag" 
is  associated.  They  are  in  this  way  constantly  foment- 
ing, in  the  form  of  a  vague  mood,  hopes  which,  as  think- 
ing men,  they  have  themselves  renounced  as  illusory, 
and  which,  as  men  of  action,  they  have  made  it  their 
task  to  extirpate. 

M.  Kerensky  calls  in  passionate  but  vague  tones  on  the 
nation  "to  come  down  from  the  clouds,"  and  fix  their 
minds  on  the  possible  instead  of  besotting  themselves 
with  dreams  of  what  is  only  imaginable.  If  he  would 
but  teach  them  in  what  precise  respects  a  possible  pro- 
gramme differs  from  those  impossible  hopes  which  many 
of  his  own  associates  have  spent  their  lives  in  inflaming, 
he  would  be  accomplishing  an  act  of  statesmanship 
as  great  as  any  recorded  in  the  annals  of  the  human 


UNRECOGNISED   OLIGARCHY      385 

buTit  m!Z"lorPt'h''7n  ^''°  ^'  •'""  °*  '^^  ""^^t  difficult ; 
than  it  seem,  Th  ^°"«^.'"g/eason,  prove  less  difficult 
tnan  it  seems.     The  principal  difficu  ty  with  which  M 

task  of  re-establishmg  order  is,  according  to  their  own 
estimate  of  it,  and  that  of  the  English  sodalist  who  iTas 
here  been  freely  quoted,  the  spirit  of  pure  democracv 

submi't  t^l  '""'"'^  if  ^"^/^'  '^  determined  not  to 
^vpf  ihf  I  ^"^  guidance  but  its  own.  Here,  how- 
ever, the  chanipions  of  order,  and  their  English  critic 

whkh"tKtf  ^V'^Z  shrewdness,  appear,iom  facts 
which  the  latter  himself  records,  to  have  gauged  very 
imperfectly  the  actual  nature  of  the  situation.  ^ 

.Jl         J^.w"*   "^""'^  ^^^  **ct  has   been  constantly 
emphasised  that   except  as  to  questions  which  are  either 
primitively  simple,  restricted  in  their  scope,  or  conceived 
so  vaguely  that  no  definite  meaning  is  attached  to  them 
no  purely  democratic  will  has  ever  any  real  ex?stenc"' 
what  professes  to  be  a  popular  will  being  merely  so  many 
reverberations  of  what  various  small  groups  have,  hi 
their  superior  energy,  suggested  to  various  sections  of 
fnnrr^;  1^  ^^'  ^""^her  been  pointed  out  that  this 
^""damental  fact  is  apt  to  escape  notice  because  oli- 
garchs and  oligarchies  are  traditionally  identified  with 
men  of  wealth,  of  distinguished  birth,  of  culture,  of  com- 
manding knowledge,  and  a  high  sobriety  of  intellect. 
M^l  ^^*'k      r^  heen  shown,  is  altogether  a  delusion. 
Men  may  be  oligarchs,  however  obscure  in  origin,  how- 
ever unbalanced  in  intellect,  provided  only  that  they 
have  in  them  an  energy  and  a  gift  of  speech  which  exceed 
to  any  great,  or  indeed  to  any  appreciable,  degree  the 
persuasive   powers   and  energies   of  most   of  the   men 
around  them.     Almost  every  popular  manifestation  of 
discontent  and  disorder,  in  so  far  as  it  assumes  any 
definite  form,  is  due  to  such  men  as  these;  and  the 
history  of  all  revolutions  begins  as  the  history  of  a  swarm 
of  rival  oligarchs,  most  of  them  squalid,  none  of  them 
capable   of   any   permanent   leadership,   each   of  them 
(either  singly  or  allied  with  a  small  group  of  associates) 
endeavouring  to  destroy  some  other  group  or  individual, 
and  each  of  them  pretending,  by  some  trick  of  successful 
or  unsuccessful  ventriloquism,  that  his  own  voice  is  really 
cc  ^ 


I  I 

I 


i 


386     LIMITS   OF   PURE  DEMOCRACY 

that  of  the  people.  Such  is  the  way  in  which  popular 
revolutions  begin,  and  two  forces  always  combine  to  end 
them.  One  of  these  is  the  experience  of  the  people 
themselves,  who  learn  that  of  all  evils  anarchy  is  the 
most  intolerable.  The  other  is  the  will  of  some  one 
man  which,  associated  with  that  of  strong  and  loyal 
supporters,  reduces  the  petty  oligarchs  masquerading  as 
democrats  to  a  nullity,  and  succeeds  in  restoring  to  a 
nation  the  order  and  security  without  which  no  tolerable 
life  is  possible. 

Now  in  what  precise  manner  the  Russian  revolution 
may  end  itself  it  is  idle  as  yet  to  speculate;  but  with 
regard  to  the  initial  events  of  it  we  are  in  a  position  to 
say  this  :  that  the  truth  of  the  above  analysis  has  never 
been  illustrated  more  clearly  than  it  has,  in  the  case  of 
Russia,  been  already  illustrated  by  these.  Thus,  the 
socialist  correspondent,  to  whose  evidence  we  will  once 
more  return,  points  out  that  the  sub-rebellion  of  Cron- 
stadt— a  rebellion  against  a  rebellion — was  the  work,  not 
of  "the  people,"  as  the  word  is  commonly  understood, 
but  of  a  middle-class  adventurer  of  some  scientific  attain- 
ments, who  had  never  done  a  stroke  of  manual  work  in 
his  life.  Again,  amongst  the  earlier  examples  of  rebellion 
which  was  purely  industrial,  he  mentions  a  case  in  which 
an  attempt  was  made  at  conciliation  by  inducing  the  em- 
ployers to  confer  with  ten  deputies  representing  manual 
labour.  When  the  deputies  made  their  appearance,  they 
were  found  to  comprise  two  labourers  only,  the  remainder 
being  middle-class  men,  agitators  pure  and  simple,  who 
had  no  connection  with  the  industries  then  in  question 
whatever.  According  to  the  same  writer  and  others, 
when  independence  was  claimed  for  certain  of  the 
southern  provinces,  this  was  the  work  of  men  who  neither 
had,  nor  pretended  to  have,  so  much  as  the  shadow  of 
any  popular  election  at  the  back  of  them.  The  body 
which  pretended  to  be  the  voice  of  all  the  workmen  and 
soldiers  of  all  the  Russias  together  consisted  at  first  of 
some  1500  persons,  or  one  out  of  every  6000  of  those  for 
whom  they  affected  to  speak.  This  mob  being  found 
unmanageable,  its  numbers  were  reduced  to  500,  then  to 
five-and-twenty,  and  then  to  no  more  than  five,  these 
five  persons  demanding  recognition  and  obedience  as  the 


AMERICAN   OLIGARCHY  387 

mouthpiece  of  90  millions.^  According  to  trustworthy 
information,  said  The  Times  of  September  13,  1917,  the 
body  of  extremists  whose  ambition  is  to  dominate  the 
country  is  a  self-constituted  organisation  of  idealists, 
theorists,  anarchists,  syndicalists,  who  are  largely  of  the 
international  Jew  type,  and  who  have  very  few  workmen 
and  very  few  soldiers  amongst  them." 

If  the  men  of  strong  will  and  practical  aptitude  for 
affairs— M.  Kerensky  may  be  taken  as  an  example  of 
them—through  whose  dictatorship  alone,  in  the  opinion 
even  of  reasonable  socialists,  Russia  may  be  saved  from 
ruin,  or  from  the  virtual  dictatorship  of  Germany,  would 
but  realise  that  the  foes  of  their  own  household  are  not 
the  forces  of  pure  democracy  as  such,  but  of  the  forces 
of  democracy  reduced  to  rival  implements  of  ruin  by  a 
conflict  of  bastard  oligarchies,  a  supreme  directorate, 
whether  called  by  name  of  a  dictatorship  or  no,  might 
recognise  in  these  last  a  collection  of  disunited  enemies 
who  are  less  formidable  than  they  seem. 

The  lesson,  however,  which  is  here  indicated,  though 
Russia  has  been  teaching  it  to  the  world  with  unexpected 
and  unequalled  emphasis,  has  not  been  taught  by  the 
example  of  Russia  only.  History  has  been  teaching  it 
by  example  in  America  and  Great  Britain  also. 

The  history  of  the  formation,  under  President  Wilson 
of  a  will  to  war  in  America  is  a  history  less  sensational,' 
but  no  less  profoundly  significant,  than  the  history  of 
the  dissolution  m  Russia  of  anything  like  a  will,  general 
and  practicable  of  any  kind,  into  a  multitude  of  wills 
constantly  shifting  and  conflicting— wills  either  too  in- 
definite to  afford  guidance  to  anybody,  or  serving,  in  so 
far  as  they  were  definite,  merely  as  guides  to  ruin— wills 
which,  professing  to  be  democratic,  represent  nothing 
niore  than  the  dreams  of  oligarchic  visionaries,  or  the 
oligarchic  ambitions  and  vanities  of  criminal  or  semi- 
crimmal  adventurers.  In  both  countries  the  oligarchic 
element  has  been  active ;  but  its  triumph  in  America  has 
been  constructive,  the  greater  oligarchy  of  construction 
having  extirpated  or  crippled  the  lesser  oligarchies  of 

^  These  five  professed  representatives  of  the  pure  will  of  the  people 
must  not  be  confounded  with  the  five  Quasi-dictators,  with  M.  Kerensky 
at  their  head,  who  formed  subsequently  the  official  government. 


388     LIMITS   OF   PURE  DEMOCRACY 

disruption.     In  Russia,  at  all  events  for  a  time,  the  latter 
have  done  nothing  but  reduce  the  former  to  impotence. 

Contemporary  attempts  at  socialist  rule  in  Great 
Britain  have  shown  themselves  to  be,  as  from  the  nature 
of  things  they  must  have  been,  not  democratic  pheno- 
mena— that  is  to  say,  exhibitions  of  the  spontaneous 
will  of  the  many,  but  partly  as  the  will  of  the  many 
manipulated  with  changing  and  uncertain  results  by  a 
few ;  partly  as  the  will  of  a  few  men  who,  bitterly  hostile 
to  one  another,  have  acted,  planned  and  plotted,  without 
any  direct  reference  to  the  opinions  of  the  many  at  all. 

Anything  like  an  attack  on  individuals  has,  in  the 
present  work,  been,  so  far  as  possible,  avoided,  the  aim 
of  the  writer  being  to  establish  general  principles,  which 
always  remain  the  same,  however  their  manifestations 
vary;  but  it  will  not  be  improper  or  inappropriate  to 
allude  to  certain  events,  the  mere  mention  of  which  will 
recall  the  names  of  certain  individuals  to  the  reader. 
The  professors  of  pure  democracy  in  Great  Britain  and 
elsewhere  have  constantly,  and  with  perfect  justice, 
declared  that,  if  pure  democracy  is  ever  to  be  a  realised 
fact,  the  deliberations  and  plans  of  the  executive  must 
always  be  public  property,  anything  "secret,"  as  the 
Russian  Council  of  Soldiers  and  Workmen  put  it,  being 
always  and  everywhere  the  hall-mark  or  brand  of  oli- 
garchy. Such  being  undoubtedly  the  case,  attention 
may  be  briefly  called  to  a  series  of  incidents  which 
occurred  in  connection  with  the  proposed  presence  of 
members  of  the  English  Labour  Party  at  a  Socialist 
Conference  in  Sweden.  In  the  first  place,  these  incidents 
turned  largely  on  the  personalities  of  particular  men— - 
a  situation  which  would  have  been  wholly  impossible  if 
the  many  all  thought  alike,  for  in  that  case  any  one  man 
would  be  equal  to  any  other.  Events  proved,  however, 
that  the  many,  if  they  had,  when  left  to  themselves,  any 
will  as  to  the  matter  at  all,  had  a  will  which  was  never 
the  same  from  one  week  to  another.  In  view  of  these 
instabilities,  the  representatives  of  pure  democracy,  in 
order  to  make  it  as  real  and  pure  as  possible,  summoned 
a  conference  which  was  held  behind  closed  doors,  not 
a  syllable  of  the  proceedings  being  allowed  to  reach  the 
millions  of  adult  persons  whose  will  was  being  manu- 


ENGLISH   LABOUR-OLIGARCHS     38S 


factured  within.  It  might  be  difficult  to  imagine  any 
more  complete  proof  of  how  distinct  is  the  process  of 
will-making  from  the  raw  popular  material  out  of  which 
alone  any  general  will  can  be  made,  if  this  secret  con- 
ference had  not  been  followed  by  a  second,  to  which 
newspaper  reporters  were  admitted,  and  at  which  the 
most  prominent  speaker,  whose  policy  had  been  publicly 
repudiated  by  the  very  masses  to  whom  he  had  made 
appeal,  is  reported  to  have  exclaimed  to  his  opponents, 
"with  a  mixture  of  defiance  and  mystery,"  "  Your  com- 
mittee and  my  executive  may  have  done  things  before 
many  hours  are  over  which  will  make  you  reconsider 
your  position."  This  speaker,  who  had  once  held  Cabinet 
rank,  may,  in  his  reasoning,  his  will  and  his  policy,  have 
been  wrong,  or  perfectly  right.  The  sole  fact  with  which 
we  are  here  concerned  is  that  his  will  was,  on  his  own 
admission,  an  element  essentially  distinct  from  that  of 
the  democratic  masses,  which,  whilst  professing  to  reflect 
it,  it  was  in  reality  his  ambition — we  may  say,  if  we  like, 
his  conscientious  ambition — to  dictate. 

This  confusion,  however,  of  the  oligarchic  element — an 
element  inseparable  from  all  complex  social  action — with 
pure  democracy,  which  is  an  element  no  less  inseparable, 
is  not  confined  to  extremists.  By  temperate  men,  men 
of  acute  insight,  men  illustrious  as  the  beneficial  wielders 
of  oligarchic  power — men  illustrious  as  statesmen,  men  of 
business,  as  political  thinkers,  or  otherwise — this  con- 
fusion is  constantly  disseminated  in  the  form  of  vague 
suggestions,  though  every  one  of  such  men,  were  he 
catechised,  would  repudiate  it  as  a  monstrous  error. 
This  feat  of  suggestion  is  accomplished  by  their  almost 
unabated  use  of  the  formula  of  pure  democracy,  without 
even  the  hint  of  an  explanation  which  might  bring  this 
into  harmony  with  the  limited  meaning  which  they 
must,  in  their  own  minds,  attribute  to  it.  Democracy 
is  a  word  which  may  be  conveniently  and  correctly  em- 
ployed to  designate  the  constitution  of  any  complex 
State,  if  by  all  parties  concerned  it  is  understood  to  mean 
simply  a  state  in  which  the  democratic  principle  is 
powerful  within  certain  limits;  in  which  it  is  provided 
with  \erra\  means  of  expressing  itself ;  and  which  is  thus 
contrasted  with  States  in  which  no  such  means  exist. 


390    LIMITS   OF  PURE  DEMOCRACY 

But  if  the  word  is  so  used  as  to  carry  with  it  the  sugges- 
tion that  in  poHtical  government,  and  in  human  affairs 
generally,  merely  popular  power— that  is,  a  power  in 
respect  of  which  all  units  are  equal — is  or  can  be 
supreme  in  any  great  State  whatever,  and  that  it  ought 
to  be  supreme  in  all,  every  time  the  word  is  so  used 
by  men  of  light  and  leading,  such  men  are  helping  to 
diffuse,  stimulate  and  perpetuate  a  mood  which,  in  pro- 
portion as  it  is  generally  cherished,  tends  to  render  their 
own  activities  difficult,  or  at  best  only  half  successful. 
They  render  it  difficult  in  political  government,  they 
render  it  difficult  in  industry,  and,  as  events  in  Russia 
have  demonstrated,  they  render  it  impossible  in  war. 

Let  us  take  the  chorus  of  official  utterances  which,  in 
Great  Britain  and  America,  have  emanated  from  sober 
and  weighty  statesmen.  Conservative  and  Liberal  alike, 
and  have  been  echoed  and  cheered  by  multitudes,  to  the 
effect  that  the  great  object  of  the  anti-Germanic  nations 
is  to  establish  democracy  everywhere,  and  utterly  to 
destroy  autocracy.  If  the  word  "autocracy"  has  any 
general  meaning  at  all — if  it  means  more  than  abuses  of 
autocracy  in  this  country  or  in  that — it  means  any  kind 
of  power  in  the  way  of  sagacity  and  intellect  which  the 
many  do  not  share  with  the  few,  or  which  gives  to  the 
few  any  power  which  is  out  of  proportion  to  their  rela- 
tively negligible  number,  the  essence  of  autocracy  is  oli- 
garchy of  one  kind  or  another.  Let  us,  then,  in  a  spirit 
of  all  respect  for  him — and  the  greater  our  respect  for 
him,  the  more  pertinent  will  our  argument  ad  hominem 
be — consider  in  particular  the  case  of  President  Wilson. 
No  statesman,  by  the  exercise  of  his  personal  gifts,  has 
influenced  the  will  of  any  great  nation  more  conspicu- 
ously than  he,  in  respect  of  a  will  to  war,  has  influenced 
the  will  of  the  population  of  the  United  States.  What, 
then,  if  accurately  analysed,  has  the  nature  of  his  in- 
fluence been?  Has  it  been  no  more  than  it  ought  to 
have  been  according  to  the  philosophers  of  the  French 
Revolution,  who  declared  that  democracy  "  had  no  need 
of  chemists,"  and  that  no  one  citizen — even  if  called  a 
king — should  count  for  more  than  one  will  out  of  so  many 
tens  of  millions  ?  Has  nothing  been  done  by  him  and  his 
chief  associates  in  the  government,  in  the  Press,  in  the 


THE   GREAT   SUPPRESSIO   VERI    391 

conduct  of  scientific  industry,  that  could  not,  and  would 
not,  have  been  done  by  an  equal  number  of  units  picked 
up  by  chance  in  the  streets  of  New  York,-  or  of  San 
Francisco?     With  equal  pertinence,  the  same  question 
might  be  asked  of  the  leading  statesmen  of  Great  Britain, 
amongst  whom  "the  cause  of  democracy  "  has  been  a  no 
less  frequent  watchword.     And  in  every  case,  if  they 
answered  it  accurately,  the  answer  of  such  men—let  us 
say  President  Wilson,  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  or  Mr.  Bonar 
Law— would  be  the  same.     The  American  President  and 
the  British  Prime  Minister  may  both  be  sincere  demo- 
crats,  if  the  word   ''democrat"   is  used   in  a  certain 
limited  sense;  but  they  are  obviously,  at  the  back  of 
their   minds,    sincere   oligarchs   also,    for  the   personal 
power  which  they  devote  their  lives  to  exercising  would 
not  be  power  at  all   unless  it  were   of  the  nature  of 
oligarchy— unless  it  consisted  in  an  exercise,  by  certain 
exceptional  units,  of  faculties  not  possessed  in  an  equal 
degree  by  all.     Mr.  Bonar  Law,  by  implication,  admitted 
this  fact  with  great  wealth  of  detail  in  his  statements 
(published  in  June,  1917)  as  to  Business  Brains,  and  the 
Men  who  are  Winning  the  War.     He  dwelt  on  the  un- 
paralleled success  of  the  British  Government  in  securing 
the  aid  of  some  hundred  of  the  greatest  employers  and 
industrial  organisers  of  the  country,  mentioning  as  an 
example  one  who  alone,  by  his  rare  abilities,  was  saving 
the  country  as  much  as  a  million  pounds  a  week;  and 
Mr.  Wilson,  if  he  spoke  for  America,  could  give  similar 
evidence. 

If  such  men  are,  then,  aware— if  they  show  by  their 
own  actions— that  the  case  stands  really  thus  :  that  in 
great  and  complex  States  the  principle  of  oligarchy  plays 
a  part  no  less  essential  than  that  of  democracy — why  do 
they  continue  to  use  and  emphatically  insist  on  a  formula 
by  which  the  principle  of  oligarchy  is  denied,  or  (what 
is  the  same  thing)  altogether  suppressed  ?  Would  any 
such  procedure  be  tolerable  in  chemistry,  in  medicine,  in 
the  manufacture  of  explosives,  or  the  construction  of  an 
aeroplane — a  procedure  which  consisted  in  laying  such 
exclusive  emphasis  on  one  necessary  factor  that  another, 
equally  necessary,  was  not  only  ignored,  but  actually 
relegated    by    implication    to    the    category    of    things 


—  P      P       ^pl»^»BI^ 


392     LIMITS   OF   PURE   DEMOCRACY 

rejected    as    superfluous,    or    definitely    condemned    as 
noxious  ? 

The  real  solution  of  the  difficulty  lies  in  a  full  recogni- 
tion of  the  fact  to  an  exhibition  of  which,  under  all  its 
aspects,  the  present  volume  has  been  devoted,  that 
democracy  and  oligarchy  are  principles  not  mutually 
exclusive,  but  that  in  any  great  and  complex  State  the 
one  IS  the  complement  of  the  other.  The  formula  of  pure 
democracy  has,  for  purposes  of  agitation,  the  great  ad- 
vantage of  being  simple,  and  easily  reduced  to  a  few 
te  ling  words ;  but  in  proportion  to  its  simplicity  it  is 
false  and  its  effects  fatal,  for  the  necessary  elements  of 
civilisation  are  not  simple,  but  complex.  A  true  formula 
cannot,  therefore,  from  the  nature  of  things,  be  presented 
to  the  masses  in  the  guise  of  an  equally  effective  aphor- 
ism ;  but  an  approach  to  such  an  aphorism  may  be  made 
by  repeating  what  has  here  been  said  already,  that  in 
any  great  and  civilised  State  Democracy  only  knows  itself 
through  the  co-operation  of  oligarchy,  or  that  the  many 
can  prosper  only  through  the  participation  in  benefits 
which,  m  the  way  alike  of  material  comfort,  opportunity 
culture  and  social  freedom,  would  be  possible  for  no  one 
unless  the  many  submitted  themselves  to  the  influence 
or  authority  of  the  super-capable  few. 


INDEX 


Abstraction  or  addition,  incomes 

derived  from,  369 
Agriculture,  the  basis  of  secure 

employment,  308-9 
Altruism,  limits  of,  233 
Ambition,  as  related  to  capacity, 

oi.O 

Anti-aircraft  gun,  as  related  to 
the  general  will,  29 

Architecture,  influence  of  de- 
mocracy on,  335 

Aristotle  on  the  final  end  of 
action,  66 

Art,  and  great  artists,  as  agents 
of  social  culture,  348 

Arts  of  oligarch  in  will-formation. 
32,  35 

Authority,    false    opposition     of 

democracy  to,  355 
Average  mass,  units  of,  9-10 
Aztecs,  the  ruling  few  amongst, 

366 

Babeuf  on  the  nullity  of  political 

democracy,  74 
Bakunin,  his  denial  of  votes  to 

masses,  58 
Bernstein,  on  the  incompetence 

of  democracy,  54 
Bi-metallism  as  the  subject  of  a 

general  will,  15 
Brook  Farm,  211 
Business,   large   and   small,  133, 
i    159,  160.     6ee  "  Income  " 

Collectivism  not  in  itself  Social- 
ism, teste  Mr  Shaw,  189 

Companies,  earned  and  unearned 
profits  of,  in  England  and  the 
United  SUites,  134-7 

Content,  the   data  of,  Book  VI 
passim,  303,  323  ' 


393 


Culture,  intellectual,  aesthetic  and 
moral,  335-50 

Democracy,  industrial-- 

Definition  of  industrial  de- 
mocracy, 80 

Trade  Union,  as  such,  not  in- 
dustrial, 81-3 

Industrial  democracy  is  self- 
guidance  by  all  manual 
workers  in  respect  of  their 
technical  actions,  83 

The  Marxian  theory  of  produc- 
tion as  related  to  industrial 
democracy,  85,  87 

Progress  of  industrial  de- 
mocracy, its  four  causes,  and 
very  narrow  limits,  91-2 

Slavery,  largely  democratic,  95 
Democracy,  political — 

Discussed  generally,  4-77 

Definitions  of,  4-10 

In  primitive  and  in  complex 
States,  21 

In  complex  States  oligarchy  is 
necessarily  concomitant,  30, 
31 

Government  by  wills  of  the 
average  units,  14,  15 

How  far,  if  left  to  themselves, 
the  average  units  have  any 
one  will  whatsoever,  16 

Groups  of  political  questions 
with  regard  to  which  a  purely 
deihocratic  will  is  possible 
and  impossible,  30,  31 

Pure   democracy   a    basic   fact 
with  regard  to  fundamentals, 
43 
Democracy,  social — 

General  definition  of  social 
democracy  188 


894 


INDEX 


INDEX 


895 


Democracy,  social — continued — 
Social  democracy  as  a  general 

sentiment     which     demands 

equalised  incomes,  189.     -See 

*'  Social  Intercourse  " 
Social  democratic  sentiment  as 

tested  by  experiments.     See 

'*  Experiments  " 
Social  democracy  and  mental 

civilisation,  335-50 
Demos,    new    definition    of,    by 

Italian  Syndicalists,  59 
Distribution  of  incomes — 

by  facts  of  production.  Book 

III,  passim 
by  sentiment.  Book  IV,  passim 
by    facts    of     production,    the 

doctrine  of  Marx,  85 
Denunciation  of  this  doctrine 

by  later  socialists,  184,  188 

Education — 

Statistical,  317 

A  training  of  the  imagination, 
323 

Education  and  oligarchy,  284, 
287 

Engels,  one  of  the  oligarchs  of 
"  The  International,"  53 
Equality — 

An  illusion  in  respect  of  per- 
sonal efficiency  and  energy,  58 

Denial   by   recent    revolution- 
aries, e.g.  Labriola,  59 

Moral  equalities,  and   recogni- 
tion of  them,  264,  273 

Material  equality,  as  such,  de- 
sired by  nobody,  231,  264,  277 

Valued  for  its  incidents,  by  the 
idle,  295 
Experiments,  Socialist,  Religious, 
202-6 

Secularist,  Owen's,  207,  212 

"  Brook  Farm  "  and  **  Wiscon- 
sin," 210,  212 

"The  North  American,"  213- 
16 

"  New  Australia,"  217,  226 

Causes  of  failure,  229-31 

Fission  of  effort  into  manual  and 
purely  mental,  106 


Freedom,     Rousseau's    fantastic 
conception  of,  1-4 

George,  Henry,  his  system  based 
on  absolutely  false  stati8tic8,321 

History,  false  interpretation  of, 
by  Marx  and  subsequent 
socialists,  363-8 

Partial  but  important  truth  in 

the  Marxian  statement  as  to 

the  source  of  incomes  in  the 

past,  369,  370 

Hogarth,  his  picture  showing  the 

interior    of    a    cloth-weaver's 

establishment,  100 

Imagination,  the  proper  training 

of,  and  its  relation  to  contact, 

323,  328 
Incas,  empire  of,  366 
Incomes,  national — 

Enormous  share  of  modern 
national  incomes  alleged  by 
socialists  to  be  taken  by  non- 
earners,  129 

Promised  "recovery  of  this 
enormous  share  by  the  people 
themselves,"  131 

Income  of  the  United  Kingdom 
at  the  beginning  of  the  20th 
century,  132 

The  large  part  identifiable  as 
directly  earned,  133,  134 

Profits  of  companies,  earned 
and  unearned,  134,  136 

True  meaning  of  "  unearned  " 
income,  136,  137 

Relative  smallness  of  unearned 
fraction,  139,  140 

Total  of  incomes  above  £3000 
and  £50<X),  141 
Incomes,     distribution      of,      in 
different  countries — 

Comparative  distribution  of,  in 
the  United  Kingdom  and 
America,  144 

Extraordinary  similarity  of  dis- 
tribution in  the  two  countries, 
145 

Similar  distribution  of  wage- 
incomes,  147 


Incomes,  distribution — continued 

Refutation  by  such  international 
facts  of  the  socialist  theory  of 
wages,  148,  151 

Super-millionaires  in  the  two 
countries,  relative  insignifi- 
cance of  their  aggregate 
wealth,  153,  155 

Income  of  England  in  1801  and 
1907,  158 

Size  of  businesses  at  the  two 
dates,  159 

The  1000  largest  businesses  at 
the  two  dates,  160 

Small  businesses  stationary, 
large  businesses  increasing, 
161 

Small  portion  of  total  incomes 
going  to  great  employers,  162 

Large  portion  going  to  a  novel 
class  of  mental  subordinates, 
162,  164 

The  largest  part  taken  by 
manual  labour,  165 

The  gains  of  labour  due  to  the 
development  of  new  kinds 
and  grades  of  labour  by  the 
industrial  oligarchy,  166-72 

Dwindling  estimates  by  social- 
ists of  the  amount  of  unearned 
incomes  in  typical  modern 
countries,  179 

General  conformity  of  distribu- 
tion to  the    broad  facts  of 
production,  182 
Admission     of     this     fact     by 

modern  socialists,  183 
Emphatic  assertion  of  it  by  an 
American  socialist,  184 
Industry,  definition  of,  80 
"  International,    the,"    oligarchy 
in,  52-53 

Jesuits,    the,    in     Paraguay,    as 
industrial  oligarchs,  176 

Knowledge  as  derived  from   an 
oligarchy,  347 

Land,  Henry  George  on  rent  of. 
321 


Land  ownership,  and  secure  em- 
ployment, 307 
Lassalle  an  avowed  autocrat,  55 

Malarial  fly,  industrial  oligarchs 

compared  to,  120 
Marx,  his  general  theory  of  pro- 
duction summarised,  85,  87 
His    doctrine      applicable    to 

simple  communities,  88 
His  vain  attempt  to  apply  it  to 
production  in  its  higher  form, 
93,  96 

His  false  interpretation  of  his- 
tory, 363-8 
Michels,    Professor,   his    account 
of  oligarchy  in  revolutionary 
parties.  Book  I,  chap.  v,j9assim 
Mind,  the  sense  in  which  it  pro- 
duces the   whole,  and   only  a 
part  of  the  increment,  161,  175 
Minimum  Wage.     See  "  Wages  " 
Monism,  industrial,  114 
Monopolists  of  business  ability, 
111,  127 

*'  New  Australia,"  217,  226 

Objectives  in  politics  as  distinct 
from  means,  Book  I,  chap,  vi, 
passim 
Oligarchy,  industrial — 

Industrial  oligarchy  as  the 
cause  of  all  modern  progress. 
101 

Development  of  mind-workers 
essential  to  the  efficiency  of 
hand-work,  103 

Development  of  mind- workers 
into  a  separate  directing  class, 
105 

The  great  mind  as  the  centre 
round  which  hand-workers 
cluster,  107-9 

Admission  by  socialists  that 
industrial  oligarchy  is  neces- 
sary, 111 

Arguments  by  which  they 
attempt  to  minimise  these 
admissions,  112 


396 


INDEX 


INDEX 


397 


1^ 


Oligarchy,  ind^tstriaJ — conlinned 
Three     of     these     arguments 

childish,  113-16 
Two,   more  serious,  examined, 
116-20 
Oligarchy,  politicnl — 

Oligarchy  essential  to  the  for- 
mation of  a  general  will  as 
to    all    questions,    even    the 
simplest,  25 
Electoral  Reform,  Free  Trade, 

etc.,  22-7 
The  oligarchy  of  invention,  29 
The  arts  by  which  ol'garchies 

elicit  general  wills,  31-5 
The  Referendum  as  an  imple- 
ment of  oligarchy,  36-8 
Every    man    an    oligarch  who 
influences  the   votes  of  any 
other,  40 
Oligarchs  of  the  tap-room,  40 
Conversational  oligarchy,  40, 41 
Public  meetings,  and  all  oratory, 
implements  of  oligarchy,  41, 
42 
Oligarchy     absent,     and     not 
needed  with  regard  to  funda- 
mental questions,  43 
Leaders   of  revolutionary   and 
labour     parties      essentially 
oligarchs,  as   shown    by   ex- 
amples collected  by  Professor 
Michels,  47-61 
Oligarchy,  social — 

Oligarchy  and  the  life  of  know- 
ledge, 347 
Oligarchy  and  art,  348 
Oligarchy    and     religion,    348, 
349 
Opportunity,  equality  of  (or  the 
right  to  rise),  essentially  a  pro- 
test against  equality  of  condition 
in  general,  Book  V,  chap,  iv, 
passim 
Owen,  his  experiences  in  Social- 
ism, 209-12 

Personal  product,  meaning  of,  in 
case  of  wage-earners,  240,  241 
the  basis  of  just  wages,  243 
True  calculus  of,  123 


Proudhon  on  the  inevitability  of 

oligarchy,  56 
Psychology,  false,  of  Socialism — 

Socialism  founded  on  an  in- 
verted psychology,  **  each  and 
all,"  293 

Altruism  deduced  from  egoism 
— **a  mother's  love,"  294 

Self-interest  the  primary  factor, 
295 

Objective  equality  desired  by 
nobody  for  its  own  sake, 
296,  297 

Efiort  and  self-interest,  299 

Real    income    as    distinct    from 

money  income,  336,  338 
Religion     purely    democratic    in 

essence,  349 
Respect  due  from   one   class  to 
another,  273 
Mutual  respect  necessary  for  a 
sound  industrial  understand- 
ing, 266,  267 
Graduation   of    resp)ect   in   ac- 
cordance with  facts,  269 
*' Rich,"  the,  small  aggregate  in- 
come  of    the   rich   in    modern 
countries,  141,  147,  153,  155 
Rousseau  on  Freedom,  1-4 
Russian    revolution,     instructive 
incidents  of,  377-86 

Security  of  work  as  an  adjunct  to 
a  just  minimum  wage,  258 
Difficulties  of  establishing  com- 
plete security,  260,  306,  309 
Sentiment,  socialist,  described  by 
Mr.  Shaw,  190 
Unreality   of    this    sentiment, 
227,  230,  238  ;  except  in  des- 
perate situations,  232 
Shaw,    Mr.  G.    B.,   on  the  real 
meaning  of  Socialism,  Book  IV, 
chap,  i,  pcLssim 
Social  intercourse  as  the   object 
for  which  States  exist,  331 
not  a  national  process,    but  a 

group  process,  333 
and    its    material    appliances, 
335 


Social  intercourse  as  democracy 
controlling  industrial  oli- 
garchy, 335,  336 

and  shopping,  336-9 

as  determining  what  goods  shall 
be  produced,  the  most  perfect 
example  of  democracy,338,339 

Comparison  of  democracy  in 
shopping  with  democracy  in 
politics,  339 

as  determining  for  each  man 
the  substance  of  his  real  in- 
come, 341.  342 

Examples— different  homes  of 
families  earning  the  same 
wages,  342-4 

as  related  to  the  oligarchies  of 
knowledge,  taste  and  reli- 
gion, 349,  350 

as  a  democratic  assimilation  by 
the  many  of  the  results  of  the 
powers  of  the  few,  351,  352 
Socialism,  elements  of,  in  every 

State,  235 
State,  the — 

Ambiguous  use  of  the  word 
"  State  "  by  socialists,  358 

Attempts  to  suggest  Socialism 
by  false  conception  of  the 
State,  358 

Conception  of  the  State  as  an 
animal  organism,  359 

False  analogy  between  the  or- 
ganic cell  and  the  individual 
citizen,  359 

The  cell,  which  is  likened  to 
the  individual,  has  no  unitary 
value,  359 

The  State,  unlike  an  animal 
organism,  has  no  common 
sensorium,  360,  361 

Partial  likeness  of  States  to  the 
half-formed  animal  embryo, 
361,  362 

Unemploynient,  how  far  it  can  be 
eliminated,  260 
Summary  of  difficulties,   Book 
VI,  chap,  xi,  passim 


Voters,  customers  as,  341 


Wages,  the  i/Ieal  minimum — 

The  minimum  must  not  be  less 
than  the  value  of  the  personal 
product,  241 

How  to  measure  the  personal 
product,  241 

Socialist  experiments  as  at- 
tempts to  measure  the  per- 
sonal product  of  the  ordinary 
worker,  242 

The  wages  of  economic  equiva- 
lence, 243 

Moral  justice  and  mere  equiva- 
lence, 244 

Wages  of  compensation,  245 

Wages  of  stability,  or  the  wage- 
earner's  net  advantage,  246, 
247  5  '         » 

The  minimum  and  the  needs  of 

manhood,  252,  253 
Limits  of  the  minimum,   253, 

254 

The  minimum  and  the  normal 
lot,  255,  256 

Security  as  an  adjunct  of  the 
minimum,  259,  262 
Wealth,    as    distiyiguished    from 
mere  sujfficiency — 

Nothing  absolute  in  wealth  336 

Only  necessary  goods  are  an 
absolute  quantity,  336 

Increase  in  wealth  is  an  in- 
crease in  superfluous  goods, 

Superfluous  goods  are  wealth 
according  as  changing  taste 
desires  them,  337,  339  ;  neg- 
lect of  this  fact  by  Mr. 
Shaw  and  kindred  writers. 
196 

Wish  and  Will  in  politics,  con- 
fusion between,  63-9 

Wilson,  President,  the  functions 
of  oligarchy  as  essential  to  those 
of  oligarchy,  ignored  in  his 
public  utterances,  390-391 


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